


The Only Way Out is Through

by shaenie



Category: LOTR RPS
Genre: Angst, Casual Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-05-04
Updated: 2004-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:55:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A writing experiment in which I didn't know where I was going until I got there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Way Out is Through

They're both drunk, and Elijah knows that's the only reason this is happening, knows that it won't ever happen again, that he'd better fucking enjoy it because Billy is straight, fucking straighter than Sean, and even if he remembers this tomorrow, Billy will never admit to remembering it. He doesn't care though, because he's been fucking thinking about this for weeks (months?) because there is just fucking something about Billy's _mouth_.

It's fucking funny, because out of all of them (besides Elijah himself, of course, no one has to tell him that _he_ looks like he should be), Billy is the one Elijah has always thought _should be_ gay (it's that mouth, those pretty fucking lips, that sweet, pink bow), not Dominic with his cocky grin or Orlando with his girl-magnet eyes, but Elijah had been sweaty and naked and filthy with everyone in the fellowship that had an interest in that sort of thing (including Sean, because apparently urgent hand jobs and wet, gasping kisses didn't count as cheating on your wife), and he had pretty much given up hope that Billy wanted to be included in that number.

Pretty much, but not completely, it seemed, because when they'd stumbled into Billy's flat after the cab ride of doom (which Elijah had spent with Orli's hand shoved down the back of his jeans, though Orli had chosen to continue onward with Dom -- not that Elijah blames him, since Dom had been on his knees on the floorboard, concealed by the darkness and Orli's coat, but the noises coming from down there had required no real explanation) Elijah had already been stone-hard. Maybe it had to do with the cab ride (and Elijah really hadn't been able to help grabbing onto Billy when Orli's fingers had curled and _pushed_ , since Orli had been pretty much occupied with a Dom-shaped attachment below the belt) or maybe just the sheer volume of alcohol consumed (and at one point, one of them had said: "Fuck, Billy, if you don't stop fucking molesting that bottle, I'm dragging you into the fucking loo!" -- Elijah is pretty sure it _hadn't_ been him, but he's not willing to bet, say, his arm on it), or maybe it's just the fucking moon, but Elijah had picked up the faintest trace of _possibility_ in Billy's voice ("Just crash at my place, Lij, let these two pissed bastards have the whole bloody back seat,") and that had been enough to convince him to extricate Orli's hand from his jeans and follow Billy (staggering, but upright) up the front walk with the sound of his own heart thundering hopefully in his head.

And once inside, he'd barely whispered Billy's name before Billy had whammed into him, full body, shoving Elijah back against the door and the question of whether or not he was ever going to get Billy's pretty little mouth around his cock had seemed to have been answered in the affirmative.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Billy is growling, but his fingers are working on Elijah's jeans, and Elijah is struggling to get Billy naked before he fucking changes his mind.

"Okay," Elijah agrees, and just jerks the last three or four buttons of Billy's shirt open all at once, ignoring the _tictictictic_ of buttons flying and bouncing on the tiled entryway, and in spite of the door behind him, Elijah nearly falls over when Billy just drops to his knees _(thunk_ ), his fingers frantic and clumsy on Elijah's fly. Elijah jerks his t-shirt up and over his head, and Billy pauses to look up at him, and the look on Billy's face is a kind of twisted combination of helpless fascination and fury.

"I hate you," Billy growls (and Elijah feels his eyebrows arch upward in surprise, and for a moment he hesitates, because Billy sounds like he really fucking _means_ it), but then Billy manages to jerk Elijah's fly open the rest of the way and his hand curls around Elijah's cock, hot and tight and urgent, and whatever Elijah might have been thinking about saying is wiped out of his brain in a surge of brighthot lust.

"Okay," Elijah says again, and Billy snarls something unintelligible before he leans forward and presses his cheek against Elijah's cock ( _huh?_ ), and Billy's breathing sounds almost like sobs, and Elijah says: "Billy, hey... wait..." but then Billy's mouth closes over Elijah's cock, and Elijah swallows the rest of whatever he'd been going to say.

Billy chokes immediately, draws back, but pushes forward again almost at once. Elijah's hips jerk forward, purely reflex, and Billy chokes again. Elijah pulls back fully this time, opens his mouth to say something, to object (because this isn't going the way he thought, he isn't sure _what_ is going on here), but Billy's hands close around his wrists and pull him down, first to his knees and then Billy is shoving him down further onto his back ("shut up shut up shut up shut up," Billy is snarling desperately, and Elijah has no idea what to do, so he does shut up) and swinging a leg over Elijah's legs, and then Billy's mouth is on Elijah's cock again, and Elijah gasps at the heat and fury of it, lips and tongue and Billy's teeth, sharp and terrifying, and Elijah squirms to avoid them, but Billy's hands are pinning his hips down now, and in spite of the uneasiness crouching in Elijah's chest, it's good, it's fucking hot, and Elijah is groaning at the feel of Billy's wet mouth on his cock.

It's clear that Billy isn't experienced, but that hardly seems to matter, a combination of Elijah having wanted this and Billy's sheer, reckless enthusiasm (though Elijah isn't entirely sure that's the right word, _need_ feels more accurate, but Elijah doesn't really understand why), and Elijah can feel the heat building in his balls and belly and lower back, can feel it pulsing and within reach, and maybe he should give Billy a little warning, maybe he should...

But then he's coming and groaning and it's too late for that, and he barely has the presence of mind _not_ to curl his fingers into Billy's hair to _hold_ him there, and he isn't surprised when Billy makes a startled sound and pulls back, he just curls his hand around his cock to maintain that _pressure_ and jerks up into his own hand, and he can see Billy through his slitted eyes, can see Billy's lips a bare inch from his cock, sees his come splash across Billy's lips and chin ("oh fuck," Elijah moans), sees Billy's eyes wide and wet and startled and... hurt?

And then he's gulping for air and shuddering, and Billy's eyes close and he is gasping, too. Elijah leans up, touches Billy's shoulders. "Billy, it's okay, it's..." and he licks at Billy's lips, licks his come (bittersalt and chemically) off of those beautiful curves, feels them trembling under his tongue, feels Billy trembling under his hands. Billy's lips curve for a moment, open and curl for Elijah's tongue, but before he can do anything more Billy is scrabbling backward, away from Elijah, his face twisting and crumpling, and Elijah says: "Billy, wait, it's okay, man..."

But Billy is on his feet and away, already, and Elijah's jeans are around his thighs, slowing him down, and by the time he gets to his feet and gets his jeans up where they belong, Billy has vanished into the bathroom, and Elijah hears the lock click.

"Billy," Elijah says, and knocks lightly on the door, and he still feels shaky from coming so hard, but the uneasiness in his chest is just getting worse; he's starting to get scared now.

"Go away, Elijah," Billy whispers huskily from the other side of the door. "Just go."

"Billy..."

"Go!" Billy shouts, but it's strangled and barely comprehensible. "Get the fuck out of here, you little bastard!"

And Elijah doesn't know what to do. So he goes.

* * *

Billy hasn't looked at Elijah in three days, and Elijah's starting to feel a little bit like a ghost, a restless spirit.

Dom pretends he doesn't notice, Orlando really doesn't notice (as far as Elijah can tell), and Sean had pulled him aside yesterday afternoon and told him in no uncertain terms that he has to fix whatever he had done, and he had to fucking do it yesterday. Elijah had jerked his arm out of Sean's grip, filled with equal parts fury (and he really is fucking angry at Sean, maybe for the first time ever, at Sean's clear assumption that Elijah had "done something" to Billy) and guilt, and stalked off, and he can feel an echo of that in his chest and gut even now, while he's walking up the street toward Billy's apartment building, swinging a CD in a plastic shopping bag.

This is not his fucking fault. He doesn't know what the fuck had actually happened that night -- well, he does know, actually, he remembers it vividly and has jacked off to it every night since, but knowing isn't the same as _understanding_ \-- but he does know that Billy had invited him in, that Billy had been on him before Elijah had ever even considered touching Billy, and that Billy had wanted it. Billy had been fucking determined to get it, and Elijah's fairly sure he didn't get out more than a dozen words over the entire three minutes it had lasted, but at least two of them had been _Billy_ and _wait_ , so this is not his fucking fault.

Still. Billy's eyes pass over Elijah as though he's transparent now, and that... he fucking _hates_ that, man. That makes him feel fucking nauseous with guilt and regret and longing, and it's not any kind of emotion he's familiar with or knows how to express. He had gone to sleep last night feeling it (after jacking off to the memory of Billy's gorgeous mouth, and how is that for guilt inspiring), and had awakened this morning with it grating in his chest, and he's come to the simple conclusion that it doesn't matter that it hadn't been his fault.

That's a child's excuse, anyway. And he should have stayed, that night. He should have stayed to make sure that Billy was all right. He shouldn't have let Billy's furious reaction drive him away, and he knows he'd only done it because he was drunk, and it was easier. He had known very clearly that something was badly wrong, and he hadn't had the balls to stay and deal with it then, when he should have.

And he doesn't want Billy not to look at him anymore. As stupid as it sounds (and he is fully and completely aware of just how stupid that is), he feels a little bit like dying every time Billy's eyes flicker past him, every time he walks into the room and Billy's smile gutters like the flame of a candle and winks out of existence, every time Billy turns around and walks the other way.

He pauses outside Billy's apartment door (it's a flat, they tell him, Dom and Billy, and Orli, mocking his "yank-isms" relentlessly, but Elijah doubts he'll ever actually start thinking of it as a flat), and sets the plastic bag between his feet for a moment to wipe his sweating palms on his jeans. His stomach feels like it always does right before really important auditions that he's certain he's going to fuck up, which is weird, because he's never felt this particular degree of anxiety before outside of that specific situation. Then again, he doesn't think he's ever had close friends before, not like this, and he's never been in danger of losing one of them.

He forces himself to knock before he loses his nerve, bending quickly to retrieve the bag between his feet before Billy answers the door.

He isn't sure what he was expecting -- Billy to answer and peer into the hallway with eyes that looked through, rather than focusing on, Elijah, maybe -- but it isn't what actually happens.

What actually happens goes so quickly that it seems like it's playing fast forward on a VCR or something, and yet every instant of it is so fucking sharp that it ought to be fatal.

The door opens, and Billy is wearing a pair of sweatpants and a little half-smile of expectant greeting; Elijah can see sweat on Billy's upper lip and at his temples, and his hair is a shade darker with it. His chest is bare, and sprinkled with hair the same shade as the hair on his head when it's dark with perspiration. He has a knife in his right hand, and his left is resting on the slim, white-painted edge of the door. Elijah doesn't react. He is too stunned (at the knife, at Billy's naked, sweaty chest, at his own response to both of those things) to have a reaction. Billy's eyes widen, and Elijah actually sees them shift from bright, cheerful green to darkish grey-green as they widen, like someone is pouring darker ink into Billy's irises, and the hand holding the knife rises, but not as if Billy is thinking of stabbing Elijah with it. No, it rises upward until it's a diagonal, held in front of Billy's chest like he's blocking something with it, a warding sort of motion (like Billy expects _Elijah_ to have a knife, and to lunge at him with it), and Billy's other hand on the edge of the door tightens until his knuckles are the same color as the paint.

Elijah can see the next several seconds before they happen, can see how Billy's chest and arm will flex, how he'll take a step back, and how the door will slam, how it will vibrate in it's frame for and instant, and how the turn of the lock from inside will be a loud, ratcheting **click** , signaling something more final than Elijah wants to think about.

 _What the fuck?_ he thinks, feeling helpless and slow and unbearably stupid. _What the fuck, man?_

Billy's face shifts away from shock (it's something worse than shock, though, and Elijah damned well knows it, something like _fear_ ) and into something blank and incomprehensible, and the muscles of Billy's biceps bunch as he prepares to slam the door.

"No fucking way," Elijah snarls (out loud, unintentionally), and inserts his foot between door and frame, holding out one palm with the hope of slowing down some of the force (certain that Billy will slam it anyway, in spite of Elijah's foot being in the way) of the door so it doesn't break his fucking foot.

Billy doesn't slam it, though. He looks down at Elijah's foot, clearly dismayed, and the knife in his hand shifts slightly, so that wicked tip is angled _toward_ Elijah.

"Go away," Billy says softly, his eyes focused somewhere just to the right of Elijah.

"If you won't slam the door because my foot's in it, Billy, I really don't think you're going to stab me with that thing," Elijah says, and he means it to be wry, means it to sound slightly funny, maybe, some kind of ice breaker or something, but instead it comes out shaky and hopeful and gentle all at once.

Billy doesn't actually sigh, but his shoulders go round and hunched, and the hand with the knife in it falls to his side. He looks down, away, and doesn't look back up again. "Go away," he repeats hoarsely.

"Billy... I just want to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk to _you_ ," Billy says, and his eyes flicker up to Elijah's face (finally, fuck!), snapping with fury, his brows drawn into a frown that looks both pained and... perplexed? "I don't want to fucking talk to you, 'Lijah, get it?" He glares, eyes narrowed into slits. "Just bugger off. Go fuck around with Dominic or Orlando, go fuck around with anyone you bloody like, but stop fucking around with _me_!"

"I never fucked around with you, dammit," Elijah snaps, and he can hear plastic crumpling as his hands roll into fists. He ignores it in favor of growling at Billy, spitting out the confusion and frustration of the last several days without thought, in a way that he knows from experience he will regret later, but dammit, he can't help it. "I didn't fucking _do_ anything! You fucking jumped me, Billy, and now you won't even fucking look at me, like I've fucking ceased to fucking exist. I didn't do anything wrong!"

Billy falls back slightly, and Elijah takes advantage of it to angle further forward, to slip further inside the apartment, but Billy doesn't let go of the door. "You fuck with everyone," Billy snarls, face twisted into the same furious lines that Elijah can remember from the other night ( _"shut up shut up shut up shut up,"_ Billy had snarled, voice catching and breaking right in the middle of it), and in spite of Billy's obvious fury, Elijah can't help that thinking of it makes him burn a little, and the flex and twist of Billy's chest and the beads of sweat he can still see on Billy's lip have the same effect. "You fuck with everyone, and then you fuck everyone," Billy adds, and he does slam the door this time, hard, and it hits Elijah in the shoulder solidly enough to send him staggering backward, out into the hall and down onto his ass.

He takes it silently, so shocked that his head feels swimmy and his face -- which had been hot and flushed just a second ago -- feels weirdly cold. He can't stop his left hand from grasping at his right shoulder, at the deep ache of it, but he hardly notices that, really. The real ache, the real fucking sting, blossoms in his head and in his chest, and Billy's voice is echoing harshly in his ears (and it's only worse that the words are bent and twisted around by Billy's accent, because that makes them undeniably, incontrovertibly _Billy's_ , and Billy never never says things like that, Billy is never deliberately cruel, so Billy must _mean_ it), echoing on low reverb, the kind that is so deep you can feel the vibration in your back teeth. He struggles to his feet without the benefit of his hands -- he can't feel his right hand, it's gone totally numb -- and takes a step back. He can see the knife in Billy's hand, still -- it's one of those long, slender ones, ornate and glittering, he notices for the first time -- but he can't bring himself to look any higher than that.

He's frankly surprised that Billy is still standing there, now that the doorway is no longer blocked.

 _Fuck you,_ he thinks of saying, but his head is pounding so hard he feels a little sick, and he's afraid his voice will reveal it, so he doesn't.

"Elijah," Billy says thickly, and his voice _twists_ inside Elijah's belly, twists his guts into an aching, excruciating knot, and whatever it is, he doesn't want to fucking hear it.

 _Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,_ he thinks loudly, as loudly as he can manage, louder than the pounding in his head, and he turns away without looking at Billy, and he doesn't hear Billy say his name again, no, and he doesn't hear anything except his own mental chant, like a fucking mantra, the Fuck You Billy mantra, until he's out of the building and down the block and fucking _away._

He's nearly home, the ache in his shoulder just a low, pulsing throb, when he realizes he doesn't have the bag with the CD in it, that it must still be laying in the hallway in front of Billy's apartment door. He stops and just stands there for a few seconds, furious and shaking, but finally decides to just fucking leave it.

Fuck it. Just fuck it.

* * *

"What the fuck," Dom says, sounding both impressed and appalled, "happened to your arm, Elwood?"

Elijah says nothing for a moment, shrugging on Frodo's shirt and keeping his face bland. "A door hit it," he answers finally, and turns away from the other hobbits in various states of undress, to open the door of the wardrobe trailer and escape into the New Zealand morning. Or it would be morning, if it was a couple of hours later and the sun was up. As it is, it's the gloom of pre-morning, he supposes, although he's always subscribed to the 'it isn't tomorrow until I sleep' school of thought, so for all intents and purposes, it's still last night.

Either way, he needs coffee and lots of it if he's going to make it through filming today. He ought to go straight to the makeup trailer, but he detours around two cameras, a massive light and beam contraption, and a tangle of wires, headed in the direction of the Craft Services tent instead. He meets Viggo at the entrance, a coincidence of timing, and Viggo gives him a courtly bow that's totally out of place for this particular phase in his Aragorn career, in which he is still rumpled and dirty and _Strider_ , and allows Elijah to precede him, murmuring: "Ringbearer."

"Stinky ranger," Elijah says, and Viggo dimples at him, which totally ruins his growly, dirty, badass Ranger vibe, but which makes Elijah feel better anyway. "Thanks," he adds, and Viggo just nods.

Viggo doesn't usually feel the same kind of need to fill silences as most people, Elijah's noticed, and this morning is no different. They stand, nominally together, in front of a selection of coffee (Elijah's got a cup in his hand and halfway to his lips before he bothers to peruse the rest of what's available) and breakfast foods, mostly buns and doughnuts and things, but also a great pot of porridge (for Billy) and a steaming rectangular warming pan -- which, if Elijah's nose doesn't deceive him, would reveal bacon if he were to lift off the lid, and probably other things, too, because a breakfast of nothing but bacon would be just shit -- and they don't talk, but it's not because anything is wrong. It's nice. Viggo selects a sticky bun, which covers nearly the entirety of its tiny styrofoam plate. When he sees Elijah looking at it, he offers it up, brows arched, and Elijah takes it, and smiles. He doesn't really feel all that hungry, but Viggo dimples again when he accepts the bun, so Elijah figures he'll eat it just for that.

Viggo returns his attention to the food, and Elijah stands there uncertainly for a moment, sticky bun plate in one hand and coffee in the other. He's not sure what to do now, because normally, if he gets here first, he grabs something for everyone and hauls it into the makeup trailer. It's easier than everyone trying to go and crowding up the place, and it's just polite.

He glances at the giant pot of porridge -- he has no idea why they always make so much, as it simply isn't possible for Billy to eat it all, but he's not really all that surprised. Elijah had witnessed Billy wheedling the porridge out of one of the girls, and he remembers how her cheeks had been bright pink and her lips hand been smiling, and he guesses that sometimes all you can do when someone pays you that kind of attention is give them what they want in a big way. It's like saying: _Not only will I give you precisely what you asked for, I'll give it to you ten times over_. It's a _Yes_ as opposed to a _yes_. It's an _Ask me for something else, anything, and I'll say yes to that, too._

"Dammit," he mutters, and sets his stuff down on a tray (they aren't supposed to leave the tent, but no one ever says anything to Elijah). He grabs a sticky bun for Dom, a cup of coffee and a plate piled high with the contents of the silver warming pan, which turns out to be eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns, for Sean. He stuffs a handful of teabags into the pocket of Frodo's trousers -- the Brits keep a kettle on a hotplate in the trailer even though it's a fire hazard, because who the fuck is going to tell Sir Ian he can't have his tea? -- and adds plastic silverware carefully, so as not to poke holes in the teabags (he'd done that, once, and Ngila had yelled at him for keeping his cigarettes in Frodo's trousers, and he had complained bitterly to Ian that his tea habit had got Elijah into trouble, much to Ian's amusement). Eventually there's nothing left but Billy's porridge, and Elijah dishes it into a bowl, feeling the simultaneous urge to spit in it, and the inexplicable urge to have some himself.

 _What the fuck?_

He does neither. Instead he adds butter and sugar -- he knows the amounts of each that Billy takes in his porridge, which he supposes shouldn't surprise him after all these months, but somehow does anyway -- and doesn't stir them in because Billy likes to wait until the butter is fully melted to mix it together. Which it will be, by the time Elijah gets it back to the makeup trailer.

He meets Viggo at the exit. Viggo has a sticky bun and a cup of coffee, and he looks gravely at Elijah's tray. "Hungry, perian?" he inquires gruffly, and steps aside so Elijah can squeeze past him.

"Fuck off, King of Men," Elijah says, and Viggo nods agreeably and heads off toward the Cuntebago, whistling tunelessly. Elijah decides he hates anyone who can be that awake at this hour, and that _especially_ includes Viggo, since Viggo doesn't actually have to be on set at the ass crack of dawn like the hobbits, but he still shows up when they do every day.

Viggo's a fucking psycho, man.

Nevertheless, he's smiling a little, which he wouldn't have bet on fifteen minutes before.

It fades by the time he reaches the makeup trailer. He can tell from the music that the other hobbits are already in there. The only good thing about Dom getting to pick the music during makeup is that Elijah will get to pick during feet, which lasts three times as long and is at least ten times as brain-numbingly boring. He hesitates going in the door, experiencing an unexpected resurgence of that same nervy anxiety from yesterday outside of Billy's apartment.

 _No,_ he thinks sternly. _Not doing this. Don't give a rat's ass if he wants to be pissed off, don't fucking care what he thinks of me._

Then he rolls his eyes, because that's such a crock of shit that it's almost -- _almost_ \-- funny.

He still doesn't understand what the fuck Billy's problem is, he's still angry about what he had said, and he still harbors at least a slight desire to spit in Billy's porridge for calling Elijah a slut (if not in so many words), but he still doesn't want Billy to hate him.

And he has no idea where that leaves him. Or them.

But he can't just stand here, so he balances the tray carefully on one forearm and wrestles the door open, negotiating the steps carefully, and doesn't really look up or around until he's inside.

"You're my bloody savior, Elwood," Dom says loudly (it has to be loud over The fucking Beatles, ugh) and from the corner of his eye, Elijah sees Billy's head snap around, his attention directly on Elijah for several seconds. Dom leans in and snags the sticky bun off the tray without bothering with the plate, tears it in half, and stuffs one half into his mouth so that his cheeks bulge, looking ludicrously like a hamster Elijah had owned when he was five. He reaches over and tries to steal Sean's coffee, but Elijah dips the tray down and turns it out of the reach of Dom's grabby hands.

"Fuck off, that's Sean's!" he says, and then Sean is in front of him, taking his plate and his coffee, smiling his thanks and blinking sleepy eyes while saying Elijah's name with that heavy, hard "juh" sound which Elijah finds both endearing and annoying. Elijah smiles back, but he's wondering why he can exchange several covertly frantic hand jobs with Sean, who is married (and seems to genuinely adore his wife, from what Elijah can tell), and have things be exactly the same, while a three-minute, one-sided drunken blowjob seems to have obliterated the possibility of simple cordiality with Billy.

He digs in his pocket for the bundled set of silverware for Sean, and then drops the teabags into Dom's lap.

Now he only has his own sticky bun and coffee and Billy's porridge and spoon, and he hesitates again, feeling stupidly uncertain, and then sets his plate on his chair -- Marie is standing beside it, clearly waiting not-all-that-patiently for him to finish handing out the food -- and his cup on the makeup bench.

Billy has one hobbit ear on, which makes him look oddly lopsided. He is not looking at Elijah when he approaches -- he has a paperback curled between both hands, the cover bent all the way back in a way that Elijah's mother would have squawked indignantly at -- but it's clear that he knows Elijah is there because he holds up one hand while Elijah is still two steps away, making a brief negative gesture that immediately sets Elijah's teeth on edge. "Not hungry," he says, without looking up, and for three seconds Elijah battles the urge to just dump hot porridge right in Billy Boyd's fucking lap. He imagines it would be immensely satisfying, it would slop, it would be everywhere, Billy would jump up and yell "Oi!" with a lapful of porridge, and fuck, it's really fucking tempting.

 _I'm a professional,_ he thinks, back teeth grinding, temples throbbing with impending headache. _I'm a professional, I'm a motherfucking professional._

"Good," he snaps ( _professional professional professional_ ), "because I spit in it."

Billy looks up at him, and for just a second Elijah thinks Billy is about to smile, roll his eyes, maybe, and call Elijah a cunt.

The silence in the rest of the trailer is profound.

Elijah is still holding the bowl of porridge, slightly outstretched, and he doesn't even fucking know why. _Just take it_ , he thinks, and it feels oddly important, almost vital. _Just take the fucking porridge, you don't even have to fucking eat it, just take it and things can go back to normal, just give me a fucking break because I'm fucking **trying** here, man!_

"I don't want it," Billy says slowly. "Give it to someone else."

"I got it for you," Elijah responds, matching Billy's tone exactly, but fury is building up behind his eyes again, although not the same as yesterday, not shocked and hurt fury, this time, just plain red rage.

"I don't _want_ it," Billy repeats, and his eyes cut away from Elijah's, close for a moment, his brow drawn into little ridges, and then open and fix on the paperback again.

Elijah says nothing for several seconds, anger simmering warmly in his belly, and when Billy turns a page (though Elijah would bet his entire fucking bank account that Billy hadn't actually read a single word since cutting his eyes down) Elijah sees that Billy's hand isn't quite steady.

Wait just a fucking second. Exactly what are they talking about here?

He bites his tongue ("This is not a symbolic bowl of fucking porridge, Billy," he has the urge to shout, "it's just fucking breakfast!") and frowns and takes a step back.

After a moment, he turns and carries the fucking bowl over to the trash can, and then he just stands there again, not quite able to just throw it away.

Five seconds pass, and someone clears their throat nervously; Elijah stands there with a rapidly cooling bowl of porridge in his hands, and he genuinely has no fucking idea what to do with it. He wishes he'd fucking dumped it in Billy's lap.

Eventually, he goes to his chair and sets the bowl down besides his coffee cup. He slides the sticky bun onto the bench next to it and sits down.

After a minute, Dom leans over and looks a question at him.

Elijah closes his eyes and pretends he likes The Beatles.

* * *

The club is packed, jumping in the best way, and playing music that Elijah recognizes nine songs out of every ten. It doesn't even matter that he doesn't especially like all of them; he recognizes them, and that makes him feel comfortable and in control, and when the ones he really does like blare from the speakers, it's like a bonus. There's a live band, but they don't start for another hour, and Elijah isn't sure if they play their own stuff, or if they just cover. It doesn't matter. He fully expects to be entertained. They will be loud, the bass will set his bones to vibrating, and he'll be even more drunk than he is right now, which is _very._

He moves with the throng on the dance floor, not particularly dancing with anyone, just dancing, and he feels almost normal for the first time in almost a week. He scans the crowd and catches sight of Orlando dancing with two girls, and he grins in Orli's direction, even though he sincerely doubts that Orli will notice. Dom is nearby, dancing with the same tiny, sloe-eyed pixie girl with the dark, short bob of hair that Elijah has stolen from him twice already tonight. The girl makes it easy to steal her -- Elijah thinks she might be slightly stoned -- and that's part of why he does it, but mostly it's because Dom doesn't get mad about shit like that. Dom just gyrates nearby, or joins the girl and Elijah, trapping her between them, until Elijah gets bored and moves away. Dom is a buddy, Dom is a true fucking friend, and he really believes the bullshit most guys spout about never letting a girl come between friends. Elijah could steal the pixie girl and drag her off into the dark, grimy hall that the restrooms open off of, could fuck her against the wall, or on the floor in one of the storage rooms, bring her back mussed and fussed and dump her into Dom's arms, and it would never occur to Dom to be pissed. He'd probably smirk at Elijah and say something snide, something like, "She's still upright, mate, you must not be doing something right," and he'd wink and just keep fucking dancing.

Dom would never lock himself in the bathroom and snarl at Elijah to get the fuck out just because of a drunken fucking blowjob.

But he's not thinking of that right now, and just to be sure he makes his way over to Dom and steals the pixie again, just catches her wrist and spins her around, and she stumbles and bumps into his chest, wide-eyed (her eyes are nearly as deeply brown as Orli's, like softly glittering coffee, warm and damp) for a moment, before she wraps her arms agreeably around Elijah's neck and grinds against him. He can hear Dom laughing, because yeah, Dom doesn't mind sharing, Dom is as open and as uncomplicated as a big, friendly mutt-type dog, no pedigree and no desire for one, but a lot of fucking style (like the dog in that Disney movie, with the rich cocker spaniel and the poor mutt, Elijah had fucking loved that one, what the hell was the name of it?) and a lot of fucking heart, and so what if he was a little too rambunctious sometimes, because that was endearing more often than annoying, and it beat the hell out of sitting at the table alone and clutching a glass of whisky and pretending _not_ to look at Elijah, even though every time Elijah looks up, he fucking is...

He pauses, tripping over his train of thought, which seems to have veered off in some unexpected direction, like Elijah's missed it, or toppled off and is just sitting on his ass on the ground watching it barrel off along the tracks without him. Huh.

What? Oh yeah, Dom is like a mutt, and as if Dom is seeking to prove this, he eases up behind the girl, wrapping his arms around her, one hand reaching a bit further to wrap around Elijah's hip, and bends slightly over her shoulder (she really is short if Dom can lean over her like that) and licks Elijah's cheek, grinning like a maniac. The pixie girl giggles, high and light, and Elijah grins too, yeah, because he's drunk and there's a pretty girl with her hips jammed tight up against his, and Dom is grinning and flickering under the popping lights on the dance floor, and what the fuck else matters? He dips in and kisses Dom's pixie, opens her mouth with his tongue so he can taste her, cool and fruity like mixed girlie-drinks, with an edge of something bitter underlying it. He wonders if he's tasting Dom in her mouth, if that bitter twinge signifies whatever Dom has been drinking, and that makes him chuckle and pull back. The pixie girl 'mmm's' softly, her head tipping forward against his shoulder, and Elijah's left face to face with Dom, only a few inches separating them, and Dom waggles his eyebrows and purses his lips. Elijah snickers and rolls his eyes, and the three of them are still moving, a kind of frenetic jerkpulsegrind in time with the music, when Elijah glances over and sees Billy looking at him. Again.

His amusement curls and withers, and he can feel the smile fall off his lips. He thinks it should make a sound, like glass breaking, but smiles aren't physical things, expressions aren't physical things, even though sometimes they feel like it. Billy is too far away for Elijah to even really be able to see his expression, but he sort of can anyway, in the straight line of Billy's back and the perfectly correct posture of his shoulders and in the way Billy looks away, quickly, and tosses back his glass of liquor in one go, like it's a shot instead of a tumbler.

It's too hot on the dance floor, suddenly, and Elijah feels crowded and surrounded. He peels Dom's hand off of his hip, giving it a brief, apologetic squeeze, and places it on the pixie girl's, and then unwinds her arms from around his neck, pressing them back until they loop around Dom's instead. Dom takes advantage of the position to nuzzle briefly at her neck, and she sighs happily and wriggles, and Elijah can see the sharp outline of her nipples pricking at the flimsy material of her shell pink dress as she arches back into Dom, her spine curving alluringly. Dom's hands slide down across the curves of her hips, but he's looking at Elijah with his brows drawn into a frown that doesn't touch his mouth, concerned.

Elijah manages a flicker of a smile, shallow and false, and mouths "bathroom" just so that Dom's eyebrows relax and unknot, and the shadow recedes from his face. Elijah turns and makes his way off the dance floor, moving in the direction of the bathrooms, which happen to lie directly away from Billy and their table and Elijah's drink, which he wants badly, but not badly enough. He'll go get another at the bar after he takes a piss and rinses the fruity-bitter mix of pixie and Dom out of his mouth.

The bathroom is dim, just like the rest of the club, and Elijah thinks irritably that if he's going to pay the equivalent of fifteen bucks to get into a place, it at least ought to have decent toilets. It's empty, though, and the music is muffled, though the bass still vibrates the floor and translates to Elijah's bones via the soles of his feet. That's okay, though, he sort of likes that. He pisses for what seems like a brief eternity, staring at the wall behind the urinal, where someone has drawn an enormous set of breasts, except that the nipples have little fanged mouths. He finds the drawing disturbing, but he can't deny that there's something vaguely erotic about it, and he thinks about how that would feel, the soft press of breasts against his chest, warm and comforting (he always finds naked breasts weirdly comforting, maybe the simple fact that he likes them, that they interest him, because being bi- is somehow less scary in his mind than being gay, although he thinks this may not be a good time to think about that), coupled with the sharp and unexpected nipping of tiny, razor teeth on his skin, maybe latching onto his own nipple...

Whoa. He's really drunk.

He backs away from the urinal (and the wicked breasts), and tucks his now half-hard cock back into his jeans. He chuckles a little, both amused and uneasy that he had just stood in front of a urinal with his dick in his hand and fantasized about biting breasts. What the fuck is wrong with him?

He reels a little as he starts to take a step toward the line of three sinks, and he remembers: _Oh yeah, I'm very drunk. That's what's wrong. Duh._ He catches himself on the edge of one of the sinks and stands there until he becomes reacquainted with his equilibrium, and then turns on the water and washes his hands. Then he dips his face down close to the tap and catches a mouthful of water as if falls, swishing it around in his mouth, obliterating the taste of the pixie's fruity lips (along with the possible hint of bitter Dom). He spits it out and grins at himself in the mirror, because the night is young and so is he, and even if he hasn't seen anyone in the club that he particularly wants to take home with him, it's nice to know he could if he wanted to. Besides that, there's still the band, later, and Elijah likes musicians. He thinks taking home one of the band members (provided one of them is clean and moderately attractive, and doesn't mind extremely short men with freakishly large eyes) would be like having his cake and eating it, too. He snickers softly while his fingers fumble at the paper towel dispenser, because hey, that's Freudian, so maybe it's like putting the cart before the horse.

He manages to wrestle some paper towels free just as the bathroom door swings open. Elijah turns toward it, blotting his hands absently, and Billy stops just inside the door.

 _He's here on purpose,_ he thinks for an instant, and isn't sure if he's pissed off or just supremely fucking satisfied, but of course that's stupid, because Billy's eyes go almost comically wide, wider than they really ought to be able to, Elijah suspects, like cartoon character eyes. Something twinges suspiciously like pain in his chest and his belly clenches, because with an expression like that, no, Billy isn't here on purpose, hadn't come to apologize or make things right, or even to fight some more.

Because maybe Billy doesn't give a shit, maybe Billy really _doesn't_ want to talk to Elijah. Maybe Billy is fine with the way things are right now, and Elijah's the only one who can't just learn to deal with reality.

Elijah looks down at his shoes -- they are both blue suede and wingtips, a combination which Dom claimed would send him straight to hell ("Those shoes are of the fuckin' Devil, mate"), and which Orli had crowed with delight over -- because it's easier than looking at Billy's wide eyes, and he'll just skirt around Billy and walk out, and maybe that isn't ideal, sure as hell won't make things any better, but at least it also won't make things any worse. Once he gets past Billy, he can retrieve his drink from the table and guzzle it, and then lose himself in the crowd on the dance floor until he's exhausted and trembling, until the lights of the club flicker to signal closing time, until he can take a cab home and sleep for three hours before he has to be on set, and he'll be so tired that maybe he'll just sleep through makeup and feet, totally oblivious to the presence of anyone else.

Yeah.

So he does that, skirts around Billy in a wide circle until he has to get closer in order to get to the door, and everything is going just fine, Billy has even moved away from the door a step to clear the way, when Elijah's of-the-fuckin'-Devil-mate shoes prove themselves, and he stumbles, triptrip, and flings his arms wide for balance, staggering forward to avoid falling on his fucking face. His fingers brush along Billy's shirt for a moment, and then Billy catches him, hands warm and competent around Elijah's middle. He holds on long enough for Elijah to catch his balance, and then lets go.

And Elijah stands there like an asshole, staring at Billy. His face feels hot with humiliation ( _way to demonstrate your style and fucking grace, Wood, damn fine job_ ), but his palms are sweaty and his brain is clamoring noisily at him, messages of confusionlustanger that he's just too fucking drunk to decipher. "Thanks," he manages, more because it seems like he ought to say it than because it's what he actually wants to say.

Billy nods silently. He isn't looking at Elijah, and his lips are a thin line. He is rubbing his palms on his jeans, Elijah sees, but he doesn't seem to be aware that he's doing it. Like he's rubbing away whatever traces of Elijah might be left on his hands.

Elijah frowns. He is absolutely positive that there's something he should do right now, something he should say, and that if he was sober he'd know exactly what it should be. When he opens his mouth, though, what comes out is, "Billy, why are you so mad at me?" and it's pathetic and plaintive, and he immediately regrets it. He doesn't know why he asked it, doesn't even want to know the answer, dammit, so he reaches for the door again, and he doesn't trip this time, and the door swings inward, and Elijah's on the other side of it before he knows it.

He stands there, feeling numb and stupid and unforgivably _young_. There is a lull in the music, a distinct lack of throbbing base, and even though it's still a dull fucking roar with all the people, Elijah hears the water turn on in the bathroom. He wonders what Billy is doing. He considers going back in to see, but that's almost certainly the booze talking, and hasn't he fucking figured out from the last time that he shouldn't fucking listen?

The rest of the night is a blur of dancing and drinking and Billy _not_ being at their table whenever Elijah's eyes happen in that direction, and it's starting to occur to him to wonder just why the hell that matters so damned much.

But he's too drunk to really think about it, and he can't help feeling just a little bit grateful for that.

* * *

The thing, Elijah is pretty sure anyway, is merely that Billy is a no.

There are two kinds of people in the world, the yes and the no, and Billy is a no, and that is why he even gives a shit. He doesn't normally mind if someone is a no, he really doesn't. He's not so egotistical as to believe that he should be able to have whatever he wants. He generally handles the no with good grace and a grin, and moves along until he finds a nice warm yes.

Dom is a yes. Dom is a big Yes, capital Y, because Dom is a yes to anything. Orli is a little yes, small y, because Orli refuses to bottom (even though Elijah's pretty sure Dom has been working on him about it). Sean is a little yes, too, and that's fine with Elijah. He understands the conditional yes.

Sir Ian had been a conditional yes, had been an "Only because you're insistent and young, and because I don't want you going off and finding out somewhere else where you might get hurt." And Elijah understands that, too. Besides, Ian is with someone now, and it's a moot point.

The thing is, though, Billy had been a no. Big No, even. Capital N. And Elijah had been pretty much okay with that, even though he had really wanted Billy to be a yes (or a Yes, or even a YES!) because hey, different strokes, right? He had been okay with that, and if things hadn't got all mixed up, he would still be okay with it.

But things _are_ all mixed up, because just for a minute, Billy had been a yes (still not a Yes, and definitely not a YES, but hey, it was progress, right?), but now he's a no again.

And that's the only reason why Billy's empty chair tonight had aggravated him so much, and that's the only possible explanation for him lying here awake right now (and that's no mean feat considering how much fucking Glenlivet he'd knocked back) with Dom snoring next to him and wondering if Billy had taken anyone with him when he'd left the club earlier.

He still doesn't know why Billy is so pissed off at him, and he wishes now he'd been brave enough to stick around and see what Billy's answer would have been. Or maybe Billy wouldn't have answered at all, but that would sort have been an answer, too. He doesn't normally lack courage -- at least, he likes to think he doesn't -- and he isn't sure exactly why he hadn't had the balls to wait for Billy to answer him. Maybe it was the booze, or maybe it was just the way Billy had looked, with his pretty mouth a straight, uncompromising line, and the lines around it grooved deep and unhappy.

The lines around Billy's mouth are smile lines. Nobody has to tell Elijah that, he's seen it often enough to be certain. It's the same with the tiny wrinkles at the corners of Billy's eyes, delicate and intricate like cobwebs spun by extraordinarily beauty-conscious spiders. When Billy's face is at rest, relaxed, they are all but invisible. They groove into existence when he smiles, though, and they make all of his smiles brighter and deeper than they would have been without them.

Seeing those lines biting into Billy's face without the smile, though... That really fucking bothers Elijah.

He isn't sure if that's because Billy is a no (maybe not a No, not anymore, but definitely a no), or just because it seems so wrong, so out of place. Maybe it's because he feels guilty about those lines. He doesn't think he's ever seen them like that before, not without the addition of Billy's smiling mouth and gleaming eyes, which totally changes the context.

His head is starting to pound, and when he stands up the room isn't entirely steady. He's probably still a little drunk. The alarm clock beside Elijah's bed says 2:44 with a little dot at the top of the numbers, indicating that it's a.m. rather than p.m.

 _What the hell,_ he thinks, _do a.m. and p.m. even stand for?_ He stares at the clock for several seconds, frowning. He thinks he must have known the answer to that at some point, but he can't think what the hell it is right now to save his life. He gives up, finally, and makes his way into the kitchen (only bouncing off one wall in the process, but of course he bounces on his right shoulder, which still aches, and is bruised a really amazing shade of plum) and turns on the tap to get a drink. The only clean cup he finds in the cupboard is a plastic Kool-Aid tumbler with little curved handles on either side, complete with the Kool-Aid man's plastic face emblazoned on what he assumes is the front. It's so small that he fills it up and drains it three times.

As he's walking back toward the bedroom, feeling a little clearer in the head, his answering (ansaphone, according to Billy, Dom, and Orli) machine clicks on, startling the crap out of him, and he stubs his toe on the corner of the wall right where the living room turns into the hallway. "Ow, crap, fuck, jeez, fuckity fuck fuck!" he snarls, clutching at his foot with both hands until he wobbles precariously enough that he thinks he might fall over, and forces himself to put both feet on the floor. He looks around for the phone, but it's nowhere to be seen, and now that he thinks about it, he hasn't seen it for a few days. Three or four. Which means it's probably dead somewhere, because if he doesn't put it on it's little base for at least a few hours every couple of days it dies, and that sucks royally because then the page button on the base, which Elijah uses at least twice a week when he can't find the receiver, doesn't make the phone beep when he presses it. Fuck.

He's thinking about actually looking for the phone receiver -- it can't have gone very far, can it, and besides, he doesn't feel at all sleepy -- when it occurs to him that the answering machine is still on, but no one is recording a message, even though there had presumably been a beep. All Elijah can hear is the hiss of an open line, occasionally interrupted by a little tickle of static, which all the phones seem to do in New Zealand on occasion. He walks over to it, curious, and the display, which normally shows the number of messages recorded on it, is just two blinking dashes, indicating an open line, recording in progress. Except no one is talking. It's just empty air.

He hobbles over to it and leans close to the speaker to listen. For a few seconds he doesn't even hear the sound of breathing, and he wonders if maybe his answering machine (ansaphone) is possessed. Maybe it's of the Devil, like his shoes. Then he does hear breathing, hears the person on the line take a deep, shuddering breath, and...

"I'm not mad at you," Billy says, very loud and right in Elijah's ear, and he jerks back, and takes two stumbling steps that almost want to be a fall backward. Abruptly his heart is hammering in his chest, and he stares at the answering machine uncertainly, wondering if he's still drunk enough that he might be hallucinating. "I'm not mad," Billy says again, and that's definitely Billy, yes, no mistaking his voice, his accent, although he's speaking fairly quietly, and his words are slurry and soft-edged. Like he's either quite drunk or quite tired. Or possibly both. "I just... I don't want... porridge. I don't want..."

Elijah blinks rapidly. His eyes feel weird, like they're too big for his eye sockets or something.

There is a long silence, long long and Elijah wonders if Billy is done, if he'd called Elijah at a quarter to three (a.m. and not p.m.) to say he isn't mad and he doesn't want porridge, and that's all Billy can think to say to him (and not even actually to _him_ , but to his fucking _ansaphone_ ) and then Billy says:

"I'm sorry I hit you with the door. I'm sorry I said... about what I said. I shouldn't have said it."

Except it's all mangled by Billy's accent and slippery-slur voice, and Elijah isn't really sure that's what he had said at all.

He stands there and waits for there to be more, but it's only another long, empty silence, and then a soft click. He sees the display on the machine start flashing the number one at him.

 _What the fuck?_ he thinks, and then, because that isn't enough to vent his confusion and frustration and the thick swell of unhappiness that's stuck in his throat, he says, "What the fucking fuck is that fucking supposed to mean? What the fuck? What the--" but his voice cracks alarmingly on the obscenity, and he shuts his mouth with a snap.

"All right, then," Dom says softly, and Elijah twitches violently in surprise. Dom's eyes are dark and worried, but his face is calm and open. "What's going on?" he asks, but gently.

Elijah opens his mouth (feeling like he might scream and shout, or possibly throw up) but nothing comes out. Nothing at all.

* * *

Elijah actually does sleep most of the way through feet, and he finds to his surprise, that filming Lothlorien scenes is restful. His dark circles and red eyes don't matter either, because Gandalf has fallen into shadow, and Frodo is understandably upset about it. Maria had made a chiding comment about not needing Elijah to help her make him look like hell, but she had let him sleep through getting his ears put on, which usually irritates her, so she hadn't really been mad.

They had done the scenes with Cate a couple of weeks before, so all that's left really is scenes of the fellowship in the forest, and the scene with Aragorn and Boromir, which is shooting simultaneously a ways away. Elijah likes to watch Viggo act, when he gets the chance, but this time he passes, and just stays put in the padded groove between two giant roots when they break.

Billy hasn't said anything to him, but Elijah hasn't actually tried to talk to him either, so... whatever. He's too tired to worry overly about it. He catches Dom eyeing him several times, too, but Dom doesn't ask again. He doesn't think Dom is actually mad, in spite of his fumbled non-explanation, but Dom has a way of looking like he knows way more than anyone knows he knows, which Elijah finds sort of odd, because Dom is the kind of guy that _usually_ acts like he doesn't know anything, and is quite happy that way.

He'd ended up not really telling Dom anything.

It's partly because he didn't know how to say it. It's all so mixed up in his head, he isn't sure how to make it come out of his mouth in a way that makes any sort of sense. He had been afraid of opening his mouth and hearing himself say something like: "Well, it's like Billy was a yes for about three minutes while he sucked me off in his living room, and then he freaked right the fuck out and slammed back into no so hard I'm surprised it didn't leave a mark. And when I tried to get him to come out of the bathroom he yelled at me, and I was just drunk enough to be confused and sulky, so I just left him there. Then I spent three days not existing, and when I tried to go to his apartment to talk to him, he called me a slut and hit me with the door, although it really wasn't as bad as it sounds. And then he was in the bathroom of the club and his mouth was all flat and unhappy, so I was going to circle him, you know, and just not mess with it, but my shoes revolted and I tripped, and he caught me, and I really didn't think he would. I really didn't, and if he hated me, he wouldn't have, right? But then he didn't go back to the table, and I really think he washed his hands before he even took a piss, and why would he do that unless he was trying to wash _me_ off of his hands? And now he's fucking leaving messages on my _ansaphone_ and I don't understand, I just... I really don't understand, and it was just fucking porridge, you know? And also I left my c.d. in his hallway. Except I bought it for him, and he hasn't offered to give it back or anything. And I'm tired and I don't know what to do."

He's fairly sure that or something like it would have come out and not only does that sound fucking insane, it just doesn't make sense and... he doesn't want to tell Dom what had happened between Billy and him. He doesn't think Billy had told Dom, first of all, and it seems like that wouldn't be very fair of Elijah to do. Obviously Billy isn't too happy that it had happened at all, right? He doesn't want to make it worse by telling anyone it happened.

And also... well, he's not a fucking little kid. He should be able to work this out on his own. He should be able to handle this like an adult, he should be able to deal.

In the end, he'd just told Dom that he and Billy'd had a fight, and he wasn't sure what to do about it, and Dom hadn't pressed. Elijah had been almost absurdly grateful.

He wants a cup of coffee, but the truth is, he wants to fall asleep again more, and it's pretty fucking comfortable right here, almost like a hammock, with the way he's stretched out, one of the roots supporting his shoulders and back, and his knees hooked up over the other. Convenient to be filming something with blankets and pillows today, anyhow, and he lets his eyes drift shut, grateful for the waiting and the downtime which usually make him grumpy and impatient.

He isn't sure if he actually sleeps or not, but at some point he becomes aware of low voices nearby, one of which twists and stretches vowels into new and exciting configurations. Well. Both of them do that, actually, but one in particular does it in a way that Elijah finds frankly fascinating. He opens his eyes, but there's no one nearby that he can see. Several of the crew are about a hundred yards away, winding some wires around some tree branches, presumably to keep them out of the shot they're setting up, and he can hear them talking, but they're too far away for him to pick out individual voices. These had been closer.

And besides that, he already knows who they belong to. He just doesn't see them anywhere.

"I'm just checking, there's no need to get your knickers in a twist, Bills," Dom says, and though the words sound as though they ought to be said sharply, Dom's voice is actually low and soothing, the same way it had sounded last night when he'd asked Elijah what was going on. "The two of you are practically vibrating with..." and Dom pauses, like he's rethinking his choice of words, "...tension. I'm just trying to help."

"I don't need help, Dom," Billy says, and his voice actually is fairly sharp, if still relatively quiet. "I'm fine. Everything is fine. Nothing you need to be involved in."

"Look, Billy," Dom says tentatively, "you know you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, but did something happen? Because I've never seen Elijah in such a dither, and you haven't acted like yourself in days."

There is a long silence, and Elijah realizes he's holding his breath. Their voices are so quiet, he wonders if maybe he'd missed Billy's answer. Then again, Billy seems prone to long, awkward silences, too (witness exhibit A, your honor, a message left on the answering machine of one Mr. Elijah Wood), so maybe not. He's eavesdropping, he's uncomfortably aware of that, but he has no intention of stopping. His palms are damp, and he rubs them absently on Frodo's rough trousers. He thinks they must be on the other side of the tree.

"Elijah's..." Billy says slowly, and then stops. "Have you asked him that question?"

"He blew me off," Dom says, and Elijah winces guiltily. "He said you'd had a fight, the two of you, and he's not sure what to do, but he was really... I don't know, there was something really off about it. You know how open he usually is."

Billy laughs, but he doesn't sound amused, and Elijah winces again. "Yeah," Billy says. "Open."

"What did you fight about?" Dom asks, and it's that same gentle invitation he'd given Elijah last night. Elijah's throat feels abruptly tight, and he wishes that he'd taken Dom up on that invitation, now. At the very least, he wouldn't have hurt Dom's feelings, on top of pissing off Billy. Although if he's honest, he knows that Dom isn't actually mad at him. Dom is just concerned. But that almost makes Elijah feel worse.

"He's just a kid," Billy says dully. "We... I... the other night when he stayed at my flat... I was really bloody drunk, Dom, and..." There's another long pause -- Elijah has no idea how Dom even stands it, he isn't even fucking involved in the conversation and he's fucking gnawing at the nail of his right index finger, his belly knotted up with frustration and suspense -- and when Billy continues, his voice is even lower, and it's tight now, with something that might be guilt or anger, or maybe both. "He came to my flat day before yesterday, wanted to talk about it, and I just... He wouldn't take no for a fucking answer, insistent little bastard, wouldn't just accept that I didn't want to bloody hash it out with him, and I... said some things, and I slammed the bloody door on his arm." Billy's breathing is almost louder than his voice, and something about it makes Elijah feel panicky and vaguely ill. "I... I didn't mean... I mean, I meant to, but... I didn't..."

"Shh, now," Dom says quietly. "Granted, it was a shitty thing to do, Bills, but it's not like you messed up his pretty face or anything."

And in spite of how pissed off Elijah had been about that, how shocked and... and _hurt_ , he really hopes that Billy laughs -- which is clearly what Dom is going for -- really hopes that the wry amusement (still soft and careful and soothing and understanding) lacing Dom's words settles Billy down. He hates the way Billy's voice sounds, feels guilty about being the reason for it, even though he is aware that's totally stupid. Who had hit who with a fucking door? But still... still...

Billy doesn't laugh, though. "I should be fucking shot," he says instead.

"Billy..." Dom says.

"No," Billy interrupts harshly. "There is no excuse for it. He's just a bloody kid, he doesn't mean to... to..."

 _To **what**?_ Elijah demands silently, but Billy doesn't say. In fact, neither of them say anything for a while. He wonders if Dom is hugging Billy, one of those really great Dom hugs, which involves Dom's whole body and whole attention, and Dom usually presses his lips up against your cheek when he hugs like that, and mutters stuff in your ear. Dirty jokes, sometimes, or a string of affectionate obscenities, or occasionally just nonsense stuff, comfort words that wouldn't make any sense if you actually heard them any other time, not muffled against your cheek or murmured into your hair. Dom is really good at those.

Elijah sort of wishes he could have one of those right now.

"It's not that big a deal, you know, Bills," Dom says finally. "Everyone wants him, at least a little."

"I'm not gay," Billy says softly. "I'm thirty, Dom, not eighteen, not even twenty-three. I'm too old to decide to go all experimental now. Besides that... I don't want him. I was drunk."

He really doesn't want to hear any more. His head is starting to ache fiercely, and he wonders if it's a delayed effect hangover or something, like his body has just realized it had been due for a pounding headache hours ago and is making up for lost time. He feels a little sick to his stomach, too, so it doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility.

 _I'm not a kid_ , he thinks (childishly) and closes his eyes, trying to will himself back to sleep. Dom says something he misses, and Billy makes a short, derisive sound.

"He's occupied with the rest of the bloody cast, anyhow," he says, and Elijah screws his eyes shut even tighter and considers putting his hands over his ears. "It was just a mistake. A stupid bloody drunken error in judgment. He'll forget about it soon enough."

 _Right,_ Elijah thinks. _I will._

"Don't you think you ought to at least talk to him?" Dom asks carefully. "Maybe tell him that. He... he seemed really upset last night."

"Not today," Billy says. "I'm fucking wiped. I'll... say something to him tomorrow. Or I'll ring him."

Dom says nothing. Billy says nothing. Elijah says nothing.

Eventually he figures they went off somewhere, when ten minutes or so passes without anything else being said.

He turns over onto his side and lays there for a while. When it becomes clear that going back to sleep isn't an option, he sits up and lights a cigarette. He probably ought to move out and away from the set, but he doesn't. He just sits there. He can feel his pulse in his temples, which would be pretty interesting if it didn't hurt so much.

He's on his second cigarette when Dom sits down next to him. He offers Elijah a styrofoam cup of coffee; Elijah takes it wordlessly.

"You've been here the whole time?" Dom asks, and Elijah can't quite keep from laughing humorlessly at the question Dom doesn't ask. Dom sighs.

Sometime later, Dom says: "I was thinking Thai, after we wrap for the day. We could go to my place. Watch videos or something?"

Elijah considers it. He knows Dom, and he knows what he's trying to do. He feels distantly grateful for the offer of distraction, but his head is still pounding and what he really wants is about ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. "Nah," he says. "Think I'll try and catch up on my sleep." He can feel Dom looking at him, can picture the wrinkle that forms between Dom's eyebrows when he's worried, so he turns and looks back, keeping his face smooth and calm. There's no reason to make it worse than it already is.

"Okay," Dom says finally, with a slight nod. He slides an arm around Elijah's shoulders, though, and tugs. Elijah lets himself melt back against Dom, lets Dom's other arm go around him, and doesn't try to hear if Dom murmur's nonsense into his hair.

* * *

Elijah manages to avoid pretty much everyone for the rest of the day. It's not actually that hard. When Peter had called a wrap, Elijah had merely inserted himself into the discussion between Viggo, Fran, and Peter concerning script changes for the next day, and that eats up nearly and hour and a half.

By the time he gets to the trailers, the other hobbits have all gone home, and Maria is working on cleaning up the trailer.

Elijah thinks he really must look like ass, because she doesn't even complain about having to wait for him. He manages an apology, which she waves off, and he doesn't even listen to any music while she scrapes glue and away from his ankles. The closest she comes to yelling is when he's back in his jeans and t-shirt, right as he's going out the door.

"We aren't doing anything that requires you to look like shit on toast tomorrow, Elijah," she says, smiling a little, but clearly serious. "Try and get some decent sleep tonight, all right?"

"That's the plan," he assures her, accompanied by a whole new wave of guilt, because he _is_ supposed to be a professional, and no matter what else is going on, it's not fair for him to be making her job harder. "Sorry," he adds. "Really."

She smiles a little brighter, and shrugs. "I've had worse. Lucky for both of us that you're prettier on your worst day than some people on their best days."

He pulls a face. "I think the word you're looking for is _stunningly handsome in an extremely masculine way,_ " he says, and she laughs brightly. He grins back and ducks out the door, feeling not quite as much like a huge asshole.

He's so tired that his head feels like it's stuffed with cotton. The headache is still there, but some of that seems to be sort of muted by the extent of his exhaustion, which is the only good thing about it. They've actually wrapped fairly early... it's still light out, anyhow, for probably another hour.

He's almost to the parking lot -- which is actually less a parking lot and more a vast, muddy tract of open field that had been conscripted for use as such, at this particular location -- when he remembers he'd ridden in with Dom, and Dom is already gone. "Shit," he mutters, but he can't seem to summon up the energy to even be terribly annoyed. There are still a couple of dozen cars scattered around the field, anyway, he can see that from here, and someone would almost certainly take pity on him and drop him off home.

He arranges himself as comfortably as possible on the low stone wall at the edge of parking area to wait for someone to pass on the way from the set to their car, and lights a cigarette. He is only there for about three minutes -- about half a smoke -- before Ian's car pulls up beside him, and the back passenger window rolls down. Elijah is as amused as ever by the fact that Ian gets a driver -- it makes conversations like these practically drip with Mafioso vibes -- and stands up to poke his head in the window.

"Dominic is worried about you," Ian says. He's looking sharp, even in the simple black slacks and white button-up he's currently sporting, and Elijah thinks he might buy Ian a double breasted, pin striped gangster suit for Christmas, just to complete the image. Ian McKellen, the Godfather of Gay. He wonders if he can find a toy tommy gun. Elijah resists the urge to snicker. "Get in."

Elijah does. He's not arguing with the Godfather of Gay, huh-uh, no sir. Or Sir. He buckles his seatbelt and bites at the inside of his lip. God, he's fucking tired, and clearly he's edging past slow-witted and groggy and into punch-drunk. Not a good sign. "Thanks," he manages, and has to bite back more snickers as Ian gestures to the driver -- the guy really should be wearing the whole chauffer get-up, Elijah thinks, maybe he'll but the driver a chauffer outfit for Christmas -- and they pull away from the little wall Elijah had been sitting on.

He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the seat. Ian's car runs quietly, and smells sharply of new leather and Ian's aftershave, which is a pleasant combination, restful. For a while they just drive, and Elijah almost dozes. It goes on just long enough for Elijah to begin hoping that Ian isn't going to ask, and then Ian pounces. Of course.

"You look positively awful," he says briskly. His tone sounds more accusing than sympathetic.

"I know," Elijah mutters, and doesn't open his eyes. _Welcome to your inter-fucking-vention, Elijah Wood,_ he thinks.

"Dominic is under the impression that you're in need of counsel of some sort." Elijah can feel Ian looking at him, sharp-eyed and considering. He thinks about just ignoring the comment -- it hadn't been phrased as a question, but Elijah knows better than to assume it isn't one -- but he knows from experience the way Ian works. He gives you openings, and the more you resist, the more prickly and uncomfortable his comments-that-aren't-questions become.

He sighs and opens his eyes. "I'm not," he says, and ignores the stretchy, achy feeling that swells up in his chest. Ian says nothing for a while, but Elijah doesn't let himself hope that he's chosen to drop it. Ian doesn't drop things, and Elijah is going to fucking chew Dom a new asshole for setting Ian on him, he really fucking is. Whether it's because Dom is worried or not, friends don't throw friends to the proverbial gay lions, dammit.

"You know," Ian says -- and his tone surprises Elijah enough that he turns and looks at Ian -- "you have one of the sweetest smiles I've ever seen." Elijah blinks rapidly, abruptly confused. Ian is looking at him strangely, not frowning or anything, but looking a little sad. "It's that it's so real that makes it so charming," Ian says in that same quiet, gentle tone, and Ian's eyes, which are sharp and bright, which always glitter with humor and a twist of cynicism, are liquid and gleaming. "I haven't seen you really smile all week, Elijah."

Elijah looks away, toward the window. His throat feels tight and achy, like it had earlier, listening to Dom and Billy talk, and he really doesn't understand what's going on with him. He's fucked up, or something, he doesn't know, and he just wishes it would stop, wishes he knew how to make it all go back to how it had been before.

"You can talk to me, Elijah," Ian says, and it sparks something furious and heated in Elijah's chest.

"I don't know what to say," he growls, and his voice sounds hoarse and deep and angry. "I feel like shit and I'm tired, and everyone wants me to talk about it, but I don't know..." He stops because he doesn't know what else to say or how to say it, and because his eyes are burning hot, and the pressure in his chest makes him think of how Frodo must feel when he puts on the ring and sees the great eye. Like he's trapped, somehow. "I feel like I'm..." he says, and is shocked and a little unnerved at how his voice comes out, a strengthless gasp, like he's choking.

He looks at Ian, and he thinks Ian is just strange. Ian is waspish and sarcastic most of the time, the quintessential grumpy old man, except that Ian never really gives the impression of being _old_ , and you never confuse his bitchiness with lack of caring. He can be simultaneously comforting and unapproachable, and Elijah had practically had to undergo a battery of psychological tests before he'd managed to get Ian to take him to bed. Ian had been what Elijah thinks of as practical good fortune, and once he'd convinced Ian that it wasn't a hero-worship or puppy love thing, that it had to do with the fact that Elijah wanted to learn and didn't want to be... fumbled at, it had all gone very smoothly. Honestly, it had seemed like the best solution at the time, and Elijah doesn't regret it. Ian had been slow and careful and methodical, and there had been almost no pain involved. It had never occurred to Elijah to go about learning any other way. He'd spent his whole life learning how to do things from other people on sets, a little older and a little more experienced. He'd learned to kiss from Christina, had learned to smoke from Josh (along with a few more kissing lessons), and when he had been sure that he wanted to learn how two guys worked together, it had only made sense to him to learn from Sir Ian.

"Do you think I'm fucking the entire cast?" Elijah demands harshly, and Ian's eyebrows twitch upward slightly.

"I think," he says musingly, "that you aren't nearly as circumspect in your affairs with Dominic and Orlando as you were with me. But no, the thought hadn't crossed my mind." Ian's eyes have resumed a more normal expression, alert and piercing, but he doesn't say anything else, like he knows Elijah will go on if he waits.

The fact that Ian doesn't mention Sean or Billy makes Elijah think he's actually quite a bit more circumspect than Ian might imagine, but he lets it go. It's pretty much true about Dom and Orli. Elijah hasn't really bothered to hide it, at least not from the cast and crew. It hadn't seemed like a big deal.

"How old were you when you figured out you were gay?" he asks, and Ian's eyebrows twitch upward slightly again, but that's the only sign that he's even remotely surprised by the question. Elijah twists in his seatbelt until he's facing Ian fully, and he deliberately doesn't think about why he's asking, or why there is an odd tremble in his belly, like nervousness or hope.

Ian thinks for a little while, his lips twisted into what might almost be a smile, except it looks a little sad, too, like Ian's eyes had earlier. "It was a different time, you know," he says finally. "Not only was it not accepted, it was simply unthinkable. I didn't even think it, for a very long time. It wasn't even that I was in denial, you understand. I quite literally didn't think it. I didn't think about why I wasn't interested in women, and I avoided thinking about men entirely. I had several relationships with some very nice young women. I don't think I really came to understand and accept it until I was in my late twenties or early thirties, and even then, there were some very rocky times." He pauses, giving Elijah a long, shrewd look. "What is this about, really?"

Elijah hesitates. He considers playing innocent, but that hardly ever works with Ian. He supposes once you've had your tongue up someone's ass, it's hard to convince them of your innocence, even if it _was_ the first time. "I'm not ready to say," he says instead, which is more or less the truth. He hardly even feels ready to think about it.

"Elijah," Ian says, frowning slight and leaning forward to catch Elijah's eyes. "Trying to convert the straight men of the world is not only foolish, it's... unethical. You only end up hurting people that way, believe me. You have to let everyone make their own decisions about things like this."

He understands completely that Ian means to chasten him, and he _is_ chastened, a little, but... "What if they make the wrong decision?" he asks, and then shifts uncomfortably under Ian's steady regard. "I mean... what if it's like... what if there was a... thing?"

"Wanting something doesn't necessarily make it so," Ian says softly. "Wanting someone doesn't necessarily make them want you. Basing assumptions on a 'thing' that you won't even give a name to is dodgy business."

Elijah nods, and he's abruptly tired again, and miserably headachy, and he settles back against the seat. Billy had even said he wasn't gay, and Billy should know, right? He was drunk. And Elijah's slept with his share of girls that he probably wouldn't have, had he been sober, so it's not like he doesn't understand that happens. And he isn't even sure what his problem is. Is he only so bothered by it because Billy _doesn't_ want him? Which is supremely stupid, because he had always known Billy was straight before that one drunken encounter, and it hadn't been a big deal. Elijah had still loved him just like the rest of the fellowship, and if he'd heard Billy telling Dom that he didn't want Elijah before that, he probably would have found it funny. No way would it have made him feel like it had today, no way would it have... hurt like that. Is it, like, an ego thing?

He doesn't want to think that he's as shallow as that, but he supposes it's possible. He genuinely doesn't understand what's going on inside his own head, and it's really fucking bugging him.

He needs to sleep, that's the thing. He needs to sleep, and then maybe think about it with a brain that's well rested and unclouded by alcohol. Elijah's still stinging a little over the whole 'just a kid' thing, so trying to think about it and be fair will probably be easier once he isn't so tired and achy and unhappy.

When the car stops, Elijah fumbles for the seatbelt, frowning furiously at the thing, which seems to have got more complicated since he'd buckled it to begin with. He barely has it unfastened when Ian surprises him by enfolding him in a hug, Ian's long arms winding close around Elijah's shoulders, his taller frame sort of bending around him. It takes Elijah a second to get over the surprise -- Ian isn't really touchy the way the rest of them are, at least not with Elijah, which Elijah has always attributed to the fact that Ian is very conscientious about leading people on, and he would want it to be quite clear to Elijah that physical affection isn't an invitation back to Ian's bed -- but then he relaxes into it, lets Ian draw him in, and surprise surprise, Ian hugs almost as well as Dom. All Elijah can see is the pale white gleam of Ian's shirt, and he can feel the slick, crisp texture of it against his cheek, and Ian still smells really good, and it's nice and comfortable and completely non-confusing.

"Talk to Dominic, Elijah," Ian murmurs. Elijah sort of wishes he were still sleeping with Ian just so he could fall asleep now, against Ian's chest, where things are warm and uncomplicated. "He's a good listener, and he's worried."

"I know," Elijah murmurs, muffled into Ian's chest.

Ian chuckles, and leans around Elijah to open the door. "Run along, now," he says. "And sleep tonight."

Elijah pauses on the sidewalk to watch Ian pull away. The problem with the fellowship is, they really are all up in each others business all the time, even when they want you to think they aren't. On the one hand, it's the kind of thing that makes you feel like you've got someone to go to when you don't know what else to do, but on the other hand, as Elijah is finding out, when you _don't_ want to talk about it, when you genuinely have nothing to say, they still feel this overwhelming need to fucking mother-hen you nearly to death; he really thinks it would be easier to get rid of a stalker than to get rid of one of them. Ian is watching Elijah, clearly waiting for him to go let himself inside, and Elijah squashes the urge to kick a big dent in the door of Ian's shiny black mafia-mobile.

Instead, he actually does go let himself inside. He stands with his back to the door until he hears Ian pull away, and then sighs.

Tomorrow is Saturday. They're filming at least a half day, which is not that unusual, trying to make up for schedule shortages and shit, and Elijah doesn't usually wish he had a job that let him be off reliably on the weekends, but this is one of those times. Another day filming with Billy only looking at him when the script demands it just seems like too much to take.

 _Sleep,_ he thinks. _Everything will look better once I've slept a few hours._

He sleeps almost immediately.

But in his dreams, he is invisible, and when he tries to find Dom to get him to help, Dom is kissing Billy behind a giant version of Ian's Gandalf hat, and Dom doesn't see Elijah either.

* * *

He wakes up just after two (a.m. and not p.m.), and he is immediately sure he won't be going back to sleep. His body is used to four or five hours, and he's had more than that already, so he's done for the night. He does feel better though. There is no sign of the headache that had roosted inside his cranium yesterday, and that's enough right there to make today (early though it may be) better than yesterday. He rubs at his face, trying to shake off the remnants of a disturbing dream that he can't quite remember the details of.

At two in the morning, his options for entertainment are severely limited. He considers Playstation while in the shower, but discards it almost immediately. His head does feel better, and his brain doesn't seem quite as jumbled as it had been for the last couple of days, but it's stupid to pretend he isn't still preoccupied with current events, so to speak. He wants to think about it.

Actually, he wants to talk about it. He decides to blame it on Ian, and peripherally on Dom. He's sure the two of them are in it together anyway. He's not stupid enough to miss the obvious set up, but he's not petty enough to be annoyed, either. As Dom would say, it's all about the love. He smirks as he towels off and digs for jeans in a pile of clean (he's reasonably sure) laundry that's occupying the end of his couch, having never quite competed the journey from dryer to dresser drawers. His favorite t-shirt ( _he's not heavy, he's my tuna_ ) is only moderately wrinkled, so he drags it over his head and shoves his feet into his sneakers without bothering with socks.

Dom will be asleep, of course, but Elijah has keys to his place, and he doesn't think Dom will mind if Elijah lets himself in and wakes Dom a little early. Dom is good like that. He can have water ready for tea when he gets Dom up; he knows from experience that tea goes a long way toward making Dom a happy man, even when awakened hours before he actually has to be up.

He decides to walk to Dom's. He only lives about a mile away, and besides, it'll give him some time to think about things, try to get them into some sort of order in his head.

The more he thinks about it, the more certain he is that it's _not_ an ego thing. He isn't that shallow, he knows he isn't, and actually he's a little aggravated at Billy for making him wonder at it, even just temporarily. He's not an asshole, he's really not, and only an asshole would get all worked up about Billy not wanting him for no reason other than because he thinks that everyone _should_ want him.

He doesn't have an out of control ego; he never has. Even if he had wanted to, Hannah and his Mom and Zach never would have let him. He might not have had what you'd call a normal childhood, but he does have a really grounded family, and one of them would have told him if he was acting like a jerk.

Not to mention Dom and Orlando. Neither of them is exactly shy, and he feels fairly confident that they'd call him on it. And Ian…

He tries to think of what Ian might say if Elijah went all egomaniacal on him, and he shivers a little at the very idea. Safe to say Ian wouldn't put up with it. Even safer to say he would never in a million years have taken Elijah to bed if Elijah had ever given him reason to believe, even for a second, that it was an ego thing.

"Fuck you, Billy," he mutters, but relatively cheerfully, walking carefully along the curb, his arms held out for balance. It's harder than it looks, because the curb is only barely visible, a slightly lighter strip of ground in the inky dark. It's dark in New Zealand, even in the city, like it never really is in L.A. Elijah sort of likes that about it, even though he also sort of likes it about L.A. that it isn't ever really dark. He's pretty sure it will all be different when he goes home after filming. It seems like ages away when Elijah is feeling good. Times like now, though, walking in the dark, it's hard not to think about how quickly the last several months had gone, how fast he had gone from new and nervous and alone to settled and comfortable and deeply integrated into the fellowship, and he's really afraid that it'll be over before he knows what hit him, and he isn't sure he'll ever find anything like this again. And if he really is blinded by his own ego, he sincerely doubts he would be so worried about losing them, all of them, sometime in the far-too-near but still nebulous future.

It's not an ego thing. And it's really a relief to be sure of that.

He's still not sure what it is that's really bothering him, but…

Well, it doesn't matter, does it? Ian is right. If Billy isn't into guys, Billy isn't into guys. Whether or not Elijah wishes things were different is immaterial. Whether or not Billy has lips to die for, perfect for blowjobs and kisses (he really wishes now that he'd managed to kiss Billy, really kiss him, before Billy had freaked out), whether or not Billy's laugh lines are beautiful, whether or not Billy's smile always makes Elijah smile, and regardless of the fact that just being around Billy is always -- okay, the last week or so is an exception, granted -- enough to make Elijah happy, Billy is what Billy is, which is straight.

Elijah can live with that, he really can. It doesn't change anything, it's exactly the way things had always been, and he just needs to forget about the whole blowjob thing. It was a mistake. He can let that go, pretend it never happened, and they can be friends again.

But Billy has to let it go, too.

And he hasn't, that's the thing. Billy hasn't, and it's hard not to think that if he hasn't, maybe it's because he doesn't really want to. Or maybe he really does want to, but can't for some reason.

And that makes Elijah feel uneasy. He can't quite interpret it any better than that.

But maybe Dom will be able to.

There's a lamp lit in Dom's living room -- Elijah can see the faint glow of it from the front windows, not bright enough to be the overheads -- so he speeds up a little, abruptly hopeful that Dom is still awake anyhow. Dom is one of those people that doesn't seem to mind missing a night's sleep a couple of times a week (and Dom doesn't look like hammered ass, when he does it, which Elijah is ever so slightly envious about), and they're off on Sunday, so it wouldn't really surprise Elijah to discover Dom had decided not to bother with sleeping tonight.

He raps on the door, then tries the knob without waiting for an answer. It's open, and Elijah grins and lets himself in (if it's open, Dom is awake; for all his raving about how much he loves New Zealand, Dom always locks the door when he goes to sleep, a habit probably left over from Manchester).

Dom isn't awake, though. Or at least, Dom isn't in the living room.

Billy is in the living room, sitting on the couch, awake and looking at Elijah.

"Oh," Elijah says. "Um."

"Do you sods always show up at one another's doors in the wee hours?" Billy asks. His voice is pleasant enough, only very slightly acerbic. He's barefoot and bare-chested, and there are a couple of pillows and a comforter wadded up on the other end of the couch, mute testament to what Billy is doing at Dom's, or what he'd been attempting to do, anyhow. Billy doesn't look like he's just woke up, though. His eyes are bright and more or less alert, and there are several beer bottles on the coffee table in front of him.

"No," Elijah says, averting his eyes from Billy's naked chest. "Just sometimes."

"Oh, right," Billy says. "Sometimes."

"Uh, where's Dom?" Elijah asks, counting beer bottles (seven, and he wonders if they are all Billy's, and if Billy is sitting on Dom's couch getting deliberately drunk, and if so, _why?_ ) to keep his eyes busy enough that they won't settle on Billy, or the distraction of his bare chest.

"In the bedroom," Billy answers, as if it should have been obvious (okay, maybe it should have been, but Elijah feels a bit thrown off balance by this turn of events, and by the tone of Billy's voice, which is _too_ friendly, almost aggressive somehow). Billy bends forward and snags a bottle off the coffee table and takes a drink. Elijah shifts uncomfortably, and takes a step or two toward the bedroom, because he isn't sure what else to do. It seems stupid to turn around and go home now, which is his first impulse, but he can't very well talk to Dom about things with Billy sitting in the living room, wide awake and drinking beer. "Orlando, too," Billy adds conversationally, his voice still pleasant, almost cheerful. "He showed up about an hour ago, I suppose." He fixes Elijah with a bright look. "You've missed out on some of the action, I'm afraid. From the sound of it, it was good." He makes a tsk-ing sound, lips pursed. "That'll teach you to show up late for the orgy."

 _What?_

Elijah feels his mouth fall open, and for a moment he forgets he isn't going to look at Billy. He thinks he was a little stupid, thinking Billy's voice was cheerful, because the look on Billy's face is tight and strained, and his eyes are glittery and angry. _What?_ he thinks again. _What, orgy, what?_ What the hell is Billy's problem? He just fucking got here, why is Billy pissed off at _him_?

"Run along then," Billy says, and yeah, now that Elijah is aware of it, the bright cheer in Billy's voice is sharp and unpleasant. "I'm sure they can manage another round. Or you could reschedule for next Friday. Or however often you bastards get together."

 _Oh,_ Elijah thinks, feeling heavy, clenching fury creeping up from the pit of his belly. _...oh._

Elijah is staring at Billy, he knows it, but he can't quite make himself stop. Billy jerks his eyes away, then closes them, tipping his head back to swallow more beer, and his Adam's apple bobs in his throat. Elijah's hands have curled into fists, clenched so hard he guesses his nails would be biting into his palms, if he had nails. As it is, he can feel each individual fingertip, and the skin over his knuckles feels tight and stretchy, ready to split. "Fuck you," Elijah breathes, and he's never in his life hit anyone in anger (not counting Zach and Hannah, but that's different), but he feels about one inch away from just fucking jumping on Billy, knocking that fucking look right off his face. His face feels tight, too, like a mask, and he has to struggle to keep it still, struggle to keep from baring his teeth or growling, and his eyes are burning furiously, like they are going to burst and boil out of their sockets, prickling madly with tears of rage (which he always fucking does, he fucking hates it that anytime he's genuinely furious, his eyes tear up without his consent). The headache has made a comeback, too, throbbing in his temples in time with his heartbeat, which is too fast and too hard.

Billy opens his eyes and looks at Elijah, and there's a little sneer curling at the corner of Billy's pretty lips. It's an ugly expression, the jut of Billy's chin is ugly and cruel, and it doesn't suit Billy's face at all, doesn't suit Billy's lips, and it doesn't seem very fair to Elijah that he should be so beautiful, still, with that fucking look on his face.

"Does it make you fucking happy, to think the worst of me, Billy?" Elijah demands, furious and hoarse. He feels a little like he's been kicked in the balls, but he pushes that aside for now; he's sure he'll have plenty of time to be miserable later, and right now he's too fucking angry for it. "What the fuck is your fucking problem, huh? Is it just easier to think badly of me than to admit that you wanted me, even if it was only for three fucking minutes while you were shitfaced? Well fuck you, fuck you, I don't fucking deserve that!"

He turns and half-staggers blindly toward the door, and he fucking hates it that he can't even fucking argue like an adult, and he just wants to get the fuck out of here before the tears spill over and Billy fucking sees. He's halfway out the door when Billy catches his wrist, and Elijah's momentum sends him careening into the wall beside the door. He doesn't even pause, although his right shoulder is smarting all over again (just his fucking luck that Billy would get the same fucking shoulder), just jerks his wrist out of Billy's hand and keeps going, but Billy catches his shoulder this time and whirls him around (Billy is fucking stronger than he looks, apparently), catching Elijah's biceps in both hands.

"You," Billy growls, "you fucking came here to..." and Elijah turns his face away, blinking rapidly, willing his stupid too big eyes with their stupid crappy vision not to fucking betray him now, but it's useless, of course, and he feels them overflow, which only fucking makes him madder. Billy jerks his hands back as if Elijah's burned him, and there is harsh, humorless laughter clawing at Elijah's throat, but he swallows it down, refuses to become fucking hysterical on top of fucking everything else. "Elijah," Billy says, and _now_ he fucking sounds uncertain, of course, now that Elijah is standing there fucking bawling like a fucking infant, and Elijah turns his back on Billy and walks away.

"Fuck you, Billy," he chokes out. "It's none of your fucking business why I fucking came here. I don't have to fucking tell you shit, fuck you."

He isn't certain if Billy hears him or not, and he doesn't fucking care. He manages to maintain a steady walk until he rounds the corner, and then he _runs_ home, runs _away_ , and lets the warm New Zealand wind dry his cheeks.

* * *

 _This is Elijah, leave a message!_

 _Beep._

 _Elijah, pick up the phone._

 _..._

 _Elijah, come on, mate, pick up. I know you're home. What's going on? Why did Billy just put his fist through my bloody wall?_

 _Elijah..._

 _..._

*  
 _This is Elijah, leave a message!_

 _Beep._

 _Lij, it's Orli, mate. Can you answer the bleeding phone, please? Dominic is nearly mad with worry, and Billy won't speak to us. Dom's forcing coffee into him now, but he just fucking sits there like... what? Oh, right... Lij, ring us, okay? We're worried about you._

*

 _This is Elijah, leave a message!_

 _Beep._

 _Elijah? Pick up, Elijah, it's Sean._

 _..._

 _Dom says you and Billy had an argument at his place. He says he heard part of it, but by the time he made it out of the bedroom, you'd already left. He's pretty worried. Billy's pretty wasted, apparently, and Dom's trying to get him sobered up before they have to be in feet. Can you tell me what's going on?_

 _..._

 _Please pick up._

*

 _This is Elijah, leave a message!_

 _Beep._

 _It's 3:30 in the morning, and unlike you blasted hobbits, **I** don't have to be on set at bloody 5 o'clock, so pick up the phone and be so kind as to tell me why Dominic is ringing me at this hour in a panic!_

 _Elijah!_

 _Elijah Wood, pick up the bloody phone!_

*

 _This is Elijah, leave a message!_

 _Beep._

 _Look, I know you're angry, I could hear you shouting from the bedroom, but Billy is... well, he's wrecked, and I can't get anything out of him that makes any sense, he just keeps muttering that he's... well, it's not important. Just ring me, **please**._

 _..._

 _I'm going to send Orli over there, Elijah._

*

"Open the fucking door, mate. I'm not leaving until you do."

 _Wham wham wham wham wham wham._

"Come on, Elijah, for fuck's sake. Whatever happened, you can't fucking hold it against him, man. He's totally off his face, arse-over-tit, he likely didn't even know what he was saying."

 _WHAM!_

"Bugger it, Elijah, let me the fuck in and stop acting like a spoiled fucking brat!"

*

 _This is Elijah, leave a message!_

 _Beep._

 _Hey. Pick up the phone and I'll call the rest of them and make them stop calling you._

 _..._

"Hey, Viggo."

"Hey, perian. Rough night?"

"Not one of my best."

"Want some company? Beanie's here... We could grab some breakfast."

"No... I... I'm just thinking. I'm fine."

"Uh huh. We can be there in ten minutes."

"..."

"No questions."

"Yeah, okay."

*

Bean and Viggo argue about football, chess, and Shakespeare during breakfast. Elijah picks at his croissant and doesn't bother to feign interest in the conversation. He's been to this little pastry shop before, also with Viggo, and he likes it. Granted, he's not in the right frame of mind to appreciate it fully -- unlike last time, when they'd stopped here on the way home from a night spent playing pool in one of Viggo's beloved little dives, the one that smelled like sawdust and wet, raw earth, and was populated by working class men with sunburned faces who were fiercely competitive at darts, pool, and drinking, but in a good way -- but he thinks it's better than staring at his living room walls and listening to his answering machine ( _ansaphone, ha fucking ha_ ) click on and off. The croissants here are actually really good, light and buttery and this one is still warm from the oven, but Elijah isn't hungry. He's only making an effort to please Viggo, who's leaving him alone for the most part, but has been carefully keeping his coffee cup full and his ashtray emptied.

The coffee is really good, at least, and that's a bonus because he doesn't think he can handle anything else. He chain-smokes and listens to Bean carry on about The Blasphemy That Is American Football -- Viggo doesn't precisely argue this, since he's not a football fan, but he seems to get a perverse pleasure in occasionally throwing out little snippets of fact that refute Bean's pansy-American allegations anyway. Elijah thinks Viggo just likes to listen to Bean rambling passionately about Football (the soccer version). Actually, he thinks Viggo likes to listen to anyone talk passionately about anything, and he remembers fishing with Viggo one day himself, carrying on a ceaseless and almost entirely one-sided discussion of music, and how Viggo had inserted just enough commentary to make Elijah feel as though he were still interested without interrupting Elijah's groove. He smiles slightly, thinking that sometimes he only gets Viggo in retrospect, and that's actually pretty cool.

This isn't one of those times, though. He gets Viggo completely right now, and is grateful to him for dragging Elijah out of the house and bringing him here, putting him in a situation where he's squashed comfortably into a small, semi-circular booth between the two Men (heh, that has vaguely porny undertones, doesn't it), and he can't just sit alone and brood, where he's surrounded (quite literally) by people that care about him, but not particularly required to participate in the ebb and flow of conversation. He's got coffee and smokes and the smell of Bean's shampoo hovering in his nostrils (something with tropical fruit overtones, which is just funny for Bean), and he supposes it could certainly be a hell of a lot worse. He can feel himself unwinding, letting the comfort of the situation soothe his raw nerves, and he doesn't mind being bulldozed into it much, because that's what friends do, isn't it?

Sometimes, when it's necessary, they kick your ass out of the house and force you not to dwell. And that's cool.

He curls his feet up into the seat and leans against Bean's shoulder. Bean throws an arm around him absently with the ease of straight men who are talking about football, which, in Elijah's experience, counteracts the appearance of all things slightly gay. Bean doesn't stop talking to do it, and Viggo doesn't stop listening, only the momentary flicker of his eyes toward Elijah indicating that he'd even noticed.

Elijah has occasionally wished that either or both of the Men were interested in guys (way to prove Billy's theory), but he thinks that this is good, too. He feels a little bit like somebody's (he's not really prepared to say who's) younger brother, tagging along with the older kids, unable to participate fully, but not entirely unwelcome for all of that.

Bean will be leaving in just under two weeks, and he wonders if Viggo is sad about that. He spends more time with Bean than with anyone else, and Elijah guesses it's a combination of things that make them get along so well, even though they're really different in a lot of ways. They're close to the same age and they've both been married and have kids, they're both straight and they're the only two Men in the fellowship. He knows Viggo likes his scenes with Bean best of all, and he knows Bean likes his scenes with Viggo best of all, even though he'd told Elijah once that he likes _Boromir_ best when he's with Merry and Pippin.

Elijah understands that, because he likes Frodo best when he's with the other hobbits, too. He's more down to earth when surrounded by his kin, less ephemeral and easier to grasp, easier to empathize with. He'd liked the scenes with Bilbo best of all, and he sort of wishes they hadn't finished all the Shire scenes already. Those had been the easiest, which only makes sense, of course. When the hobbits had been home, in the Shire, all of their concerns had still been trifling. They hadn't been carrying so much on their small shoulders. Plus, being _home_ , being surrounded by the familiar and comfortable, makes every problem easier to deal with, makes changes seem less earth shattering.

He wonders if that's part of Billy's problem. He wonders if there is just too much in Billy's life that's different right now, and maybe he just can't figure out how to get a handle on this one thing. Elijah can sort of understand that, even. He's been there, sorta, on the set of The Faculty, faced with Josh's sinewy forearms and shaggy hair and wide, blunt hands. He hadn't dealt with it like Billy is -- if Billy's angry accusations can even be called dealing -- but he hadn't handled it exactly well, either. He'd mostly run away from it. He'd let Josh kiss him a handful of times, but he'd always fled before things went too far, before Josh could ask the questions Elijah could see in his eyes, and before his own confusion could escalate to the point where he needed to seriously contemplate it.

He thinks of how Billy's voice had sounded when he'd eavesdropped on him and Dom behind the tree ( _"I'm not gay. I'm thirty, Dom, not eighteen, not even twenty-three. I'm too old to decide to go all experimental now. Besides that... I don't want him. I was drunk."_ ), tired and somehow _bruised_ sounding, and yeah, it's easy to see how being attracted to Elijah (even drunk, even temporarily, even against his will) would have left him upset and confused, even angry.

And if it wasn't temporary, maybe, if it wasn't just because he was drunk...

That might make him even angrier. Angry enough to behave viciously, which is so totally out of character for Billy that Elijah can still hardly believe it.

It seems wrong to hope that's it. It seems wrong to sort of wish for something that Billy so obviously doesn't want.

"Hey," Bean says, and proceeds to squash Elijah up against his side with one arm until Elijah makes a wheezing sound. Bean laughs down into his face and lets him go. "Time to get our arses in gear, mate. All good hobbits are in feet in ten."

Elijah grumbles something about being the rebel hobbit, but he doesn't resist when Bean tugs him out of the booth, Viggo squeezes Elijah's shoulder for a moment, and neither of them argue with him when he snags the check and pays for all three of them.

 

Bean takes the back seat without comment, even though Elijah would have been glad to have taken it, as Bean has considerably longer legs than he does. Elijah doesn't say anything about it.

He thinks they're trying to make him feel like a grown up, just one of the guys, and it's touching in a goofy sort of way. Never mind that he doesn't really require it. He's not about to spoil it for them.

He figures Billy will say something to him today. He doesn't really see how Billy can avoid it. Dom, at least, will bully him into it, and Elijah isn't sure how he will react if it happens. It would be a lie to say he isn't angry. He _is_ angry, but he's starting to think maybe that isn't really it. What's really it is that he's hurt. He's hurt that Billy is being such a prick in the same way that he'd be hurt if it were Dom or Orli or any other member of the fellowship, any of the people in the cast and crew that Elijah considers friends, but more than that... he's hurt that Billy doesn't want him, or maybe doesn't _want_ to want him.

And it still doesn't feel like an ego thing, not really, because it's not that Elijah thinks everyone ought to want him. It's that he wants Billy, that he pretty much always has, and he guesses it always sucks not to be wanted by the one you want. It had been easier when he'd just thought Billy was pissed at him.

Now... now he just feels sort of... hollow. The unhappy pressure that has crouched in his chest and throat at different times over the last several days seems to have taken up permanent residence in both, and he can hardly even choke down coffee through it.

He's glad being Frodo won't require him to portray anything more convincing than grief today.

He's not entirely sure that's what he's feeling, but he thinks it's close enough to pass.

* * *

Elijah begins to suspect he's had more coffee and nicotine than is good for him when Maria grabs his leg for the third time, wrapping both hands around it. She's looking up at him with her lips compressed into a tight line of displeasure, but she doesn't actually say anything. He watches her slowly uncurl her fingers from around his bare calf, and before her hands are even two inches away from his leg, it starts to jitter nervously. _Oh,_ he thinks, and she braces both hands on her bent knees and shakes her head. Elijah stills the twitching muscles of his leg with a few moments of serious concentration. He sees her take a deep breath and sigh, but she still doesn't say anything. He's got his Discman on -- it had seemed the best way to ward off any impending conversations -- and she probably thinks he can't hear her. He can, since he actually has the volume all the way down, but telling her that would defeat the purpose of wearing it, so he just winces guiltily when she peels misplaced glue off his ankle and starts again.

He can see Dom looking at him in one of the big mirrors, but he keeps his eyes carefully averted. He's really not up to any sort of confrontation, not even the non-verbal, carried out entirely in body language that's meant to be subtle, worried crinkly forehead and vague frown kind. Easier to wait until after work, when Dom will no doubt corner him anyway. Elijah will suggest they go get a beer at the pool and dart-playing dive he'd been thinking of earlier this morning, where two guys can sit and talk without having to shout over the music, and where he really doubts anyone except possibly Viggo will think to look for him. He's looking forward to that, actually, even if it is in the same way you look forward to going to the doctor to get an antibiotic shot, which you never want to do because it hurts like a motherfucker, so by the time you break down and do it, it's because you feel so shitty that the idea of a big needle jammed into your ass cheek seems preferable than one more minute being sick.

Sean is scribbling something into a notebook, which would normally drive Elijah half crazy with curiosity, but which arouses only a faint interest this morning. And even that passes quickly.

Billy seems to be sleeping.

This aggravates Elijah more than he can easily rationalize, so he'd stopped trying after the first half hour or so. Now every time he glances at Billy (or whenever Billy makes a sound, which isn't snoring, but more like soft, tuneful humming), he just has the urge to throw his Discman at Billy's crotch and cry, "Pleasant dreams, dickwad?" while performing an interpretive dance (okay, maybe jig would be more apt for what he has in mind) of vengeful glee on top of the box he is currently standing on.

The world really is a suck-ass place if Billy can act like the world's foulest cunt and then come to work and sleep standing up. And he's definitely fucking sleeping, as while those breathy, gentle sounds he's making may not actually be snores, they are definitely not wide-awake-and-wracked-with-guilt sounds either.

Just further proof that life isn't fair, Elijah supposes, like only realizing how fucking good sleeping with Josh would have been _after_ the opportunity to do so has passed, and the fact that in spite of years of trying, he is apparently never going to learn to wiggle his ears like that kid Paul Elijah'd met on his one and only trip to summer camp.

 _Yeah, my life sucks,_ he thinks mockingly. _It's not like I'm eighteen years old, moderately financially well off, good looking, talented, and right in the middle of doing what I want most to do in the entire world._

He smiles a little, because, as John likes to say (usually during a conversation that starts with Orli claiming dwarves are short, ugly, and smelly, and inevitably ends with everyone else agreeing that dwarves are brave, canny, and have excellent personal hygiene, much to Orli's annoyance), everything is relative, and he's really not such a punk that he doesn't appreciate how lucky he is. Mostly, anyway.

Billy makes another soft, sleepy sound, and Elijah gives in to the urge to turn and look at him (feeling fairly safe in doing it, seeing as Billy's been asleep for nearly an hour and is currently oblivious to Elijah's regard). Yep, definitely sleeping, Elijah can even see his eyes flickering behind closed lids, and it's hard not to wonder how the hell he's not falling over. Elijah would definitely fall over, were he to attempt to do that. Not only that, but if Elijah did somehow manage to sleep standing up, even for a moment, he'd probably snore at a thoroughly humiliating decibel, and drool down his own chin. There is no sign of drool on Billy's chin. Billy's pretty lips are slightly parted, but not hanging open or anything, and his cheeks are a little pink, like Elijah's get when he sleeps under too many blankets. He looks really Pippin-ish, sleeping like that, sweet and less likely to throw barbed words at a person than anyone else on the planet.

He isn't sure how long he stands there, just looking at Billy sleep, when Dom growls, "Ow, fuck!" and something crashes and shatters.

Elijah jerks his attention away from Billy (and wow, it's harder than he he'd have thought, harder than he wants it to be) and toward Dom. Dom is shaking his hand, which seems to be dripping with tea, likely from the bits of mug on the floor beside his box.

"Shite," Dom says, but it seems almost absent this time. Angela is already running a hand towel under cool water for his hand, but he barely seems aware of her, even when she wraps it around his hand and he hisses, his eyes crinkling in pain. He's looking at Elijah, his eyes wide open and surprised-looking, which Elijah supposes _could_ be attributed to having spilled hot tea all over his hand, but guesses that's probably not it. "Elijah?" Dom says, his brows lowering, knitting into that frown of confused concern that Elijah usually appreciates, but would really sort of like to smack right off of Dom's face at the moment. "What...?"

Elijah doesn't say anything -- he's not really sure what to say -- but he can feel his face heating up, and Dom's eyebrows unknit themselves and go up up up, nearly to his hairline, and he looks at Billy with that stupid look on his face. Elijah can't help following his gaze, hoping that Billy is still sleeping, but not really expecting it.

Billy isn't, of course, the cup shattering would be a bit much to sleep through. He's looking at Dom, his eyes cloudy and sleepy, but concerned. "All right, Dom?" he asks, voice low and sort of furry with sleep.

"Yeah," Dom says, but he sounds funny, like he's had the wind knocked out of him, and that's almost funny. Elijah's felt like that for most of the week. He loses his grasp on his (admittedly tenuous) amusement when Dom looks back at him, though, and he doesn't look surprised any more. No. His eyes are dark and sympathetic, or possibly pitying, and that's worse than maybe anything else Elijah can think of.

He looks away quickly, but not before he sees Billy from the corner of his eye, turning away from Dom to look at Elijah, frowning, but not like he's angry. He looks sad. Sad, and Elijah can't stand the idea of Billy (who is one of the smartest people Elijah's ever met) seeing and understanding that look on Dom's face, and he thinks he might throw up if he sees pity on Billy's face, as if the downward turn of his mouth and his sad, tired eyes weren't bad enough.

For long moments, it's painfully quiet in the trailer, and Elijah feels like he can hardly breathe in the dense air. He can practically feel Billy and Dom looking at each other, probably holding one of their silent conversations, and Elijah wants to scream at them to fucking stop it, because they're making him feel smothered and miserable.

Instead he fumbles at the volume knob on his Discman just as he hears Billy say, "Hey, Elijah-" and he's nothing but relieved when the music slams into his eardrums, too loud, louder than even he likes it, almost painful, but better than the alternative, better than hearing Billy apologize right now, when the pity in Dom's eyes and the sadness in Billy's eyes are already lodged in his throat so that he can hardly breathe, and if his hands weren't clutched around his Discman they'd be shaking.

* * *

Maria, apparently spurred to new levels of speed and competence by the palpable tension in the room, gets Elijah out of there nearly a quarter of an hour before the other hobbits. On his way out -- Discman still assaulting his eardrums in a painfully comforting manner -- she gives him what he's pretty sure is a _significant look._ He recognizes it from his mom and Hannah, and he wonders briefly in maybe only the female of the species is actually capable of that particular expression. He's never seen it on another guy's face, anyway, and it's pretty recognizable. He wonders if women know that it's not something guys know how to interpret. He can think of fifty things that look could mean, from ' _you just stepped on my toe, Elijah, you careless fucker,'_ to _'why the fuck did I get stuck with you as **my** hobbit, did I do something wrong in a past life?_ Or it could mean something else entirely. The only thing he's really sure of is that no good can come of having a look like that directed at him, and he's glad to be leaving the trailer.

Not that that's the only reason.

He hides behind the trailer that serves as the ladies wardrobe trailer, when there are any ladies around (which there aren't at the moment, so nobody should be inside it) and lights a cigarette. After a minute, he takes the Discman off. It's sort of funny, because in spite of the volume of the music, he'd nearly forgotten he had it on. Funny how things get to be background noise, barely noticeable. It's not just noise, either. Lots of things eventually become background information given enough exposure. You just get used to stuff, become so familiar with it that your brain doesn't even process it as unusual or noteworthy.

Smog, for example. He'd never even really paid any attention to it in L.A., hadn't smelled it or seen it. It was just the way things were, the air just smelled like old, dead motors with traces of rubbertargasoline. The air in New Zealand is different, though, clean, and he thinks it's kind of funny how it seems almost like the air in L.A. had been how air is supposed to smell, and the air in New Zealand is some kind of exotic variant, sweet and light, like magic air. He wonders if that will reverse itself by the time he gets back to L.A., if he'll have become so used to magic air that when he gets home, his eyes will water and sting with the stinking exhaust whenever he ventures out of doors. He hopes not.

He really hopes not, because it would really suck to find out that having magic air for a little while is enough to ruin regular air forever.

He thinks you get used to people that way, too.

Elijah is used to Dom's solid good cheer and erratic flights of fancy, Viggo's somehow weirdly comfortable eccentricity, and Bean's slightly moody, and usually silent, moments of introspection. He's used to Ian's sarcastic asides, Sean's cautious attention to detail, and Orli's abomination-before-man-and-nature fashion sense. He's used to John's crazy stories and Peter's ability to remain calm and supportive under the worst imaginable circumstances. He's used to Fran being adorable in every conceivable way, and he's used to Ngila being focused so intensely that it's occasionally scary. He's used to Richard's unapologetically geeky excitement about every new idea he has. He's used to Alan being able to build kingdoms on paper based on the curve of a hill and a pile of mossy rocks.

He's used to Billy smiling and laughing, used to him singing absently in the kitchen while making tea, used to his bright eyes and his quick wit and his empathy and his kindness and the way that he can laugh when they're freezing their asses off on mountain tops or trying to hit ping pong balls dangling from the ends of strings with their fake swords until it feels like their arms will fall off. Pretty much all of those things have been missing from every day of the last week, and it's unnerving to realize that he's so used to them that he hasn't ever even thought about them until now, until they've been gone so long that Elijah's beginning to forget what it even sounds like to hear Billy laugh.

"Big girl's blouse," he mutters aloud, and tries on a smile because he's always found that particular British-ism funny, but it doesn't feel right on his face so he lets it fall away and digs a little trench in the ground next to his hobbit foot to crush his cigarette out in.

He thinks about calling Hannah -- for a little sister, she's a surprisingly good listener -- but he isn't even sure how he'd explain the situation. He can't even think of the right words for it inside his own head, and the idea of trying to articulate it makes him feel a little sick to his stomach. Besides that, he hasn't actually told anyone from home that he's bi. Hannah would be -- will be, he's pretty sure -- his first choice, as far as coming out goes, but he's reluctant to do it over the phone. He doesn't expect it to be a big deal with her, but still... It's intimate. It seems like the kind of thing he should do in person. And on top of that, doing it that way would be tantamount to asking Hannah to hide it from their mom, and that seems unfair.

In the end, he just smokes another cigarette and leaves his phone in Frodo's coat pocket, and that's what he's doing (crouching down with his back against the cool metal of the trailer wall in the exact way he isn't supposed to because it isn't good for the glue that holds the hobbit feet on) when Dom finally tracks him down.

Elijah can't really say he's surprised. Dom crouches down beside Elijah, and doesn't say anything for a while. Elijah offers him the half smoked cigarette, and Dom takes it without a word. Dom is what you'd call a social smoker, usually, and even then it's fairly occasional, so Elijah guesses he's pretty freaked out. He decides to let Dom keep that one, and digs another out of his pack.

Eventually Dom crushes his cigarette out in Elijah's dirt-ashtray, and turns to look at him. Elijah doesn't bother to try to avoid Dom's gaze, even though it makes the back of his neck tighten in the way that it always does right before he gets a throbbing headache at the base of his skull.

"You know he's straight," Dom says softly, his forehead doing that furrowing thing, worried and anxious.

Elijah brushes his fingertips against the little furrows of skin until they smooth out, and Dom smiles faintly, which softens some of the anxiety out of his face. "I know," Elijah says, and manages to twist his lips into what is probably a pretty crappy attempt at a smile in return. "I heard."

"Well," Dom says, and hooks an arm around Elijah's neck, tugging him up against his side. "Then you're a tool, Elwood."

But he tips his forehead against Elijah's temple, breathing softly on his cheek. "Yeah," Elijah agrees. "Big time."

For a little while, neither of them say anything, and Elijah's okay with that, even though he suspects Dom will eventually interrupt this comfortable silence with questions Elijah doesn't know how to answer.

Dom doesn't, though, at least not before the question that's been sitting in the back of his brain since he'd listened to Dom's messages on his answering machine last night surges to the front of his brain and trips off of his lips in an inelegant stumble. "What... what happened last night? You were... your messages... I mean..." He manages to shut up before the stammer graduates to a full-blown stutter.

Dom pulls back a little and looks at Elijah, frowning again. "He was absolutely tanked. Knocked a hole in my wall right beside the door. Wouldn't really talk, just muttered, you know how hard he is to understand when he's really sloshed. I don't know, 'Lijah. I can't really tell you, I've never seen him act like that. Never thought I would."

Elijah struggles to keep back a bitter sound that wants to impersonate a laugh.

"I'd like to know what he drank, though," Dom says thoughtfully, and scratches absently at his nose, turning away. "Must've been something other than just the beer bottles we found. Just went on and on that he couldn't get the taste out of his mouth."

 _The taste...?_ Elijah thinks, frowning, and then blood heats his face so quickly that he swears he can hear the low roar of it, can feel it pushing through his neck, forcing his pulse dangerously high and taking up too much space, constricting his throat so he can't quite get his breath. _Oh, man,_ he thinks, and his belly drops to somewhere around his knees and then bounces back up to crush against his diaphragm, putting pressure on everything within the confines of his ribcage, squeezing things impossibly until Elijah thinks he might pass out, and he wonders distantly what the hell this is, exactly, is it embarrassment ( _huh, what?_ ) or hope ( _was he-- why was he-- what the fuck does that **mean**?_ ) or some kind of fucked up panic attack, because it feels a bit like all of those things.

Dom doesn't seem to notice though, Dom is frowning and looking off into the trees and not at Elijah, for which Elijah is profoundly grateful because he's pretty sure he must look approximately the same way he feels, which is too say like he's been hit square in the nuts with something soft, like a feather pillow, and can't yet decide if it actually hurts or not because he's so deeply sure that _anything_ that hits you in the nuts _ought_ to hurt.

Then Dom says, "Seemed all right after he puked, though," and the whole thing happens again in reverse, the blood leaving Elijah's face so quickly he feels a little faint (and his back slides down the trailer wall in what seems like slow motion until his ass hits the ground harder than slow motion would allow for), his stomach plummeting again like it's weighted with lead (but it stays down this time, heavy and knotted), and the only things that stay the same are the fact that his throat is too tight to allow for his breath and his ribcage feels like it's been wrapped in those huge, thick industrial rubber bands and they're crushing the fucking life out of him.

 _Oh, hey,_ he thinks dizzily, _hey, whoa, that's okay, I don't want to hear any more, please._

"Elijah?" Dom says sharply (it slices into Elijah's brain like and ice pick to the frontal lobe), and then Dom's hands are under his arms, manhandling him up to his feet. "Fuck, are you all right, mate? Did you sleep at all last night? You fucking look like hell!"

Elijah sways on his feet a little and waits for the dizzysickfaintness to pass, which it eventually does. "Yeah," he says finally, and sounds only a little strangled, but Dom cocks his head and frowns at him. "I slept from the time I got home until I came to your place," Elijah manages to say, and he must sound a little better because Dom's face relaxes (though not entirely), and then he slides his arms around Elijah and pulls him into a hug that allows him to bury his face in Dom's shoulder and just lean on him, grateful for how warm and solid he is, even more grateful that Dom doesn't know just how miserably crappy Elijah really feels right at the moment.

Dom smoothes his palm between Elijah's shoulder blades, slow and soothing, and by increments, Elijah gets himself under control.

When he finally opens his eyes and removes his face from Dom's shoulder, Billy is standing at the end of the trailer looking at them.

For a long moment, Elijah considers just closing his eyes and pretending he isn't there.

Then Billy looks away, back toward the set, and says, "Peter's ready for us," in a tight, flat voice that exactly matches the tight, flat line of his lips.

* * *

They've filmed exactly one and a quarter of the five scenes that Peter has slated for this morning -- an estimate that Elijah is certain is laughably optimistic for a half day -- when it starts to pour down rain with pretty much no warning. There is a furious scramble to cover up equipment, which Elijah attempts to assist in until Peter shoves him under a tarp with the other hobbits, a sure sign that this does not mean that Peter will decide to let them go.

"Crapola," Sean mutters, sighing, and Elijah feels bad for him because Christine and Alex are in town, and Sean doesn't get to spend enough time with them as it is. A delay like this practically guarantees a whole day filming (by which he means a whole day standing around and hoping it clears up enough to film at some point, and if it does, then a whole day rushing through everything in the mad hope that they still might wrap a little early) instead of a half, and any plans Sean might have had with Christine are pretty much shot. Elijah gets the feeling that Chris isn't really all that happy in New Zealand to begin with, and a sideways look at Sean shows that his face is tight and a little pinched.

"Hey," Elijah says, and elbows him gently in the ribs, feeling it sink into that extra layer of padding that only Sean is allowed (required) to have, and which makes him extra good for sleeping on. "She'll understand when she sees the rain," he says, and Sean's eyes lighten a little (Elijah is always slightly amused by the fact that Sean worries so compulsively that he often can't seem to see the obvious things that could help alleviate it) as he considers this. He smiles faintly and tugs at one of Elijah's Frodo-curls. Elijah smiles back, even though he's hyper aware of the fact that he's squashed under a tarp with three guys, all of which he's had carnal relations with.

He turns his mind away from that thought quickly, because true or not (and it is, there is no denying that), and whether he's ashamed of it or not (he isn't, not exactly), this seems like a bad time to dwell on Billy's opinion of him and whether or not it's warranted.

"You think this is going to last long," Dom asks (he's talking to Billy; for some reason, whenever he has questions about the weather he asks Billy, just like anytime he has questions about music, he asks Elijah, though Elijah isn't entirely sure why Dom feels that Billy has some kind of weather expertise), and sticks his hand outside the dubious protection of the tarp to let the rain fall on it. "At least it's warm," he observes, and licks raindrops off his palm with careful swipes of his pink tongue.

"Nah," Billy says, and Elijah sees he's got his eyes closed and his head resting on Dom's shoulder. "Came on too quick, it's just a squall."

Dom curls an arm around Billy's back, and ruffles Billy's Pippin wig with his wet hand. Billy swats ineffectually at Dom's hand without bothering to open his eyes, and his lips quirk upward at the corners. "Cunt," he mutters fondly, and Elijah feels a twinge of something green and unpleasant twitch to life in his belly. Dom's long fingers spider-walk down Billy's neck, prompting another round of useless one-handed flailing from Billy, and Dom tweaks Billy on the end of the nose lightly.

Billy smiles.

He doesn't open his eyes, but it looks like a genuine smile to Elijah.

He looks away quickly, immediately feeling like a shithead for the flutter of jealousy still lurking in his belly. He isn't even sure what he's jealous about. Not Dom's arm around Billy or Billy's head resting on Dom's shoulder, because that would be stupid. That's nothing, that's just normal, and he's seen the two of them in far more compromising positions (at least to the casual observer) in the past and never felt like this seeing it. Dom is all touchy-feely with everyone, after all, and while Billy maybe isn't quite as physically demonstrative with most people, he's always been that way with Dom. They're Dom-n-Billy, which is like the hobbits-n-orli, sorta, like two things that just fit together naturally, like steak and potatoes, or rum and coke, or peanut butter and jelly, the sort of things that are good all by themselves, but ten times better together. They've always been like that. Dom-n-Billy, Billy-n-Dom, and Dom has always been able to make Billy smile, so it doesn't make sense for it to set up acid ripples of bitter envy in his gut now.

 _I want..._ he thinks, but he stops himself before the thought forms entirely. It's pointless and masochistic, and he refuses to indulge in it.

He watches the crew scurry around instead, competent and really astoundingly quick. Peter is soaked and doesn't seem to realize it, and Elijah's is amused to see fallen leaves are sticking to his ankles. He looks more like a hobbit than any real person Elijah has ever seen, and he's a little surprised at the warm wave of affection that the sight of him calls up. He can't hold onto the surprise, though, because Peter is just that kind of guy, easy to like and admire, easy to want to please. He can see Viggo and Bean and Orli huddled under another tarp all the way across the set, although Orli is actually the only one doing any huddling. Viggo and Bean Don't seem to particularly mind getting a little wet, and of course they don't have any prosthetics to worry about melting. He wishes briefly that he were over there with them, because he can see them laughing from here, and he's more aware than he wants to be of the silence that has stretched thin and sharp around the hobbits over the last few days.

He wishes he knew what to do to break it. He'd be content if things could just go back to how they were before, and never mind impossible half-formed wishes. At this point, he'd be happy if Billy would just look at him and smile at the same time.

"Hey, you know what," he says at the same time that thought slides through his mind, and he turns to look at Billy (with no real idea of what he's going to say) and finds that Billy is already looking at him (like Billy had already known that whatever Elijah is about to say is to him, or maybe Billy was just looking at him already, and Elijah doesn't want to foster the wriggle of stubborn hope that idea spawns, but he can't quite help it).

"What?" Billy asks, and blinks at Elijah with sleepy eyes that inexplicably make Elijah's mouth go dry and loose.

"Uh," he says once he convinces his tongue to cooperate, "I want..." ( _things to be like they were_ ) and no, that isn't right, so he tries again, "... can't we just--" ( _pretend it never happened_ ) but he stops because Billy has straightened and is looking at him intently, all the sleepy languor banished from his eyes, and it's weird how Elijah's never noticed how unsettling that is, to have someone ( _Billy_ ) paying that much attention to him, but he gives it one more try because he feels like it's too late to stop now. "Do you want to--" he gestures toward the closest trailer, thinking _talk_ , thinking _make up_ , thinking _talk_ again, yeah, that's probably best, but what he actually says is, "get out of the rain?" which isn't what he means at all, which sounds, actually, like Elijah is attempting to pick Billy up off the side of the road in the pouring rain after they've had a fight in the car and Billy has demanded Elijah pull over and stalked away in the standard fight-and-make up/out scene in your run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, probably starring Julia Roberts (who is far too tall for Elijah) and Richard Gere (and Elijah doesn't really _believe_ the gerbil rumors, of course, but there is something indefinably creepy about him nevertheless, so that would be a no-go), and he clearly really is very bad at this, so when Billy nods once, slowly, Elijah is momentarily at a loss.

"Yeah, that's probably... OW!" Sean says, and Elijah sees that Dom has his hand around Sean's wrist, apparently fairly tightly. "I... uh, I think I'll get coffee," Sean amends.

"Me too," Dom agrees quickly, and drags Sean away, along with the tarp.

Elijah stands there for a moment, and then manages: "Way to go, Dom. Really fucking smooth."

Billy snorts (which Elijah tells himself isn't actually a laugh), and adds, "Brilliantly understated," and turns and starts in the direction of the trailer (which is the makeup trailer actually, which is good, because since everyone's already made up and on set, it's not likely to be occupied). Elijah follows him, stomach tied in a giant knot of nerves of the oh-great-now-that-i've-managed-to-start-the-process-what-the-fuck-do-I-do variety, and somehow still manages to keep his hobbit feet mostly dry by picking his way using tufts of coarse, springy New Zealand grass as stepping stones.

Billy holds the door open for him, so Elijah goes in first.

The trailer is empty, for which he is properly grateful, but he can't think what to say. Billy is standing in there just inside the door, just looking at Elijah and not saying anything, so maybe he's waiting for Elijah to start (although Elijah rather thinks that Billy ought to have to do it, since he's the one that's been a dick all week, but then again Elijah had deliberately not listened to him this morning, so maybe he's waiting for Elijah to apologize for that, and he guesses he will, because he's willing to sacrifice a little indignant pride to make things okay between them), so he says, "Billy..."

And then Billy is kissing him ("Mmph!" Elijah says, his hands flailing madly for a moment), and even though Billy hadn't ever kissed him that night, that one time, it feels a lot like that to Elijah because Billy's hands are grasping urgently at him, clumsy and needy, and his mouth is hot like Elijah remembers it being around his cock, soft and wet and open, and Elijah is kissing him back because what else is he supposed to do, why shouldn't he, he _wants_ to, dammit, and his cock (having been neglected for the last few days) has surged enthusiastically to life so he has the excuse of having a very limited blood supply to his brain, right? Elijah hands finally figure out what they want to do, which is curl around Billy's hips to line them up and _pull_ , yeah, and Billy is, whoa, hard too, is hard and pushing desperately at Elijah, and Billy's hands have managed to yank Frodo's shirt out of the waistband of Frodo's trousers and his palms are warm and his fingertips are biting into Elijah's ribs, and for long, long, sweet moments it's the only thing in Elijah's head, Billy's hungry mouth and grasping hands, and the long, steely press of Billy's cock jammed up against his, and fuck _yes_ , he _wants_ this.

"What are you doing to me?" Billy growls, lips moving right up against Elijah's, and it sounds like, it sounds too much like...

 _"I don't know what I'm doing..."_

And wait, just wait (and it's hard, he's trying to think past Billy's lips on his neck and Billy's hands sliding up his back beneath his shirt), because things hadn't really worked out all that fucking well the last time, things had, in point of fact, gone to hell in a handbasket, and Elijah wants this, fuck yes he does, but does he fucking want it more than he wants Billy to smile again, more than he wants Billy to be _Billy_ , kind and funny and laughing at life, at everything, at _him_?

"Wait," Elijah gasps, and uses his grip on Billy's hips to push him back, and he remembers how well saying wait hadn't worked last time, so he steps back, too. "Wait, just wait a minute."

"Elijah," Billy whispers, and his eyes are so dark, his pupils are like fucking saucers, and he holds his hands out, palms up, and just repeats, "Elijah."

Elijah's hands twitch upward without his permission, his fingers curl, but he thinks if he takes Billy's hands right now they are going to end up on the floor with their stupid (and wildly inappropriate) hobbit trousers around their ankles, maybe with Billy's mouth on his cock again (and he can't help but shudder, just thinking about it) or maybe his mouth on Billy's cock this time (oh, oh, he really really fucking wants to do that, he really fucking does), and by the time it's done it'll be too late for either of them, and they won't be able to take it back or forget about it (maybe they already can't, Billy's face, tight and urgent and burning under Pippin's unruly curls, makes Elijah think that it may already be too late for that and he doesn't know how to feel about that), and as much as he wants to think it could fix things, could make the last week just... just gone, ugly memories that probably wouldn't be that hard to banish, he thinks it's even more likely to fuck things up even worse, maybe to the point where they can't be fixed at all, and that possibility is just too horrifyingly strong to ignore.

"Billy," he says shakily. "I... I don't want to do this again."

Billy flinches back like Elijah has slapped him, and whoa, that's not good, that look, the twist of Billy's mouth, that's not good at all, and Elijah panics, and fumbles for something to say that might make it go away. "This week, I don't want it like that, Billy, I can't fucking do that any more. If you... I don't want... I don't want you to kiss me and then scream at me, I really... I really don't think I can fucking take that, and I don't want to do this again like that, if you, if we..."

"No," Billy interrupts, and Elijah shuts up because he'd really just been babbling anyway, and he doesn't want Billy to think he's a total fucking moron as well as a slut. "No, you're right," he says, and his hands fall down to his sides (and Elijah's stomach falls with them, and he wishes like hell he could tell what Billy is thinking, wishes he knew how to distill meaning from his face, which is very still, wishes he understood why it feels like he's... receding somehow), and he isn't looking at Elijah at all, he's looking somewhere past Elijah. "Of course you don't. Of course."

"Billy," Elijah says, because he doesn't like the way Billy looks and the way Billy's voice sounds -- flat and distant -- but when he takes a careful step forward, Billy takes a step back, and Elijah's hands go up like Billy's had, palms up and open and vulnerable, and his tongue runs away from him. "Please don't, Billy, just don't be pissed at me anymore, I don't want you to hate me, and we can just pretend it never happened if you want to, nothing ever happened and it can be like it was before, we can be friends..."

"I don't hate you," Billy says quietly, but he still isn't looking at Elijah because he's got his hand in front of his eyes, is rubbing at his temples like he's tired or has a headache, and Elijah can't tell at all what he's thinking. "I never hated you. I... I'm sorry, I was a complete bastard. I... it won't happen again."

He's out the door before Elijah can think of what to say to that.

Dom comes looking for him after a while; when he asks what happened, Elijah says, "Nothing," and his voice comes out sounding like Billy's voice, flat and distant.

* * *

Billy doesn't avoid him and doesn't yell at him and doesn't do any of the dozen things that have made the last week so utterly crappy.

He also doesn't smile, not even around Dom, for so long that by lunch -- at which point they still have two full scenes to shoot -- Elijah is thinking that there's some kind of karma going on here, some vast and malevolently anti-Elijah force that is making it so things don't go right between Billy and him.

Except for the part where they were kissing, which had gone very right indeed.

In fact, he's starting to wonder if maybe it wouldn't have been better to have just let Billy continue kissing him, let that just lead to wherever, because he doesn't particularly think stopping him this time had worked much better than _not_ stopping him had last time, and he's tired, he's getting really fucking tired of trying to figure out the right thing to do. At least if he hadn't stopped it he'd have got an orgasm out of it. Probably anyway (and even if he hadn't, even if he'd only got to make Billy come it seems like it would have been worth it). And considering that he's been hard off and on all day (mostly on, and mostly when he looks at Billy and thinks about Billy's hands on his skin, biting into his ribs and clutching at his back, and also when he thinks about Billy's tongue pushing into his mouth, and that at least it had been reciprocal this time, unlike last time when Elijah had pretty much just stood there while Billy went down on him, and it's probably a good idea if he doesn't think about it anymore just now), that simple satisfaction is starting to look more and more important with hindsight. Even more important, yeah, because things had gone all... wrong somehow.

Not in a big way, not in a Billy-locking-himself-in-the-bathroom-and-snarling-at-Elijah-to-get-the-fuck-out kind of way, not in the same way as it had gone wrong before, but... yeah. Still not right.

And right had been what Elijah had been going for, when he'd pulled back, and it seems pretty fucking unfair to have given up maybe his only chance for those kisses based on the hope that he might be able to make things right if he did. At least it seems that way, now, since apparently the plan to make things right (okay, plan was probably the wrong word, it had been more like an impulsive moment of insane hope) seems to have gone awry.

Not _horribly_ awry, at least. Billy seems... okay, at least, isn't shouting obscenities or looking through Elijah, but...

The absence of anything remotely resembling happiness in Billy's eyes only confirms that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions.

And Elijah isn't sure what to do about it. It's like... well it's like they aren't quite speaking the same language. Like what Elijah is saying and what Billy is hearing are different things, like... Chinese.

Yeah, like Chinese, which Elijah had read somewhere has like two hundred different dialects, except that linguists claim they're actually entirely different languages, according to the rules for that kind of thing, which say that dialects are variations on the same language, like British English and American English, in which there are some differences, but two people speaking them are still supposed to be able to understand one another, for the most part.

Like, there might be moments of confusion, like how the word pissed means mad to Elijah, but it means drunk to Dom (unless you add "off" to it, and then it means mad to Dom, too), but overall they can still communicate, right? Like a you say toe-may-toe, I say toe-mah-toe kind of a thing.

Dialects. Except Chinese isn't like that because some people speak Mandarin and some speak Cantonese (and some speak Fukienese, which is Elijah's favorite, and the only one other than Mandarin and Cantonese that he actually remembers from wherever he'd read this to begin with) and if you speak Cantonese you can't understand someone who speaks Mandarin, and vice versa, and that's what talking to Billy in the makeup trailer had been like.

Like they were speaking in what _sounded_ like the same language, but actually wasn't at all.

With Chinese, it's because it's a tonal language, according to what Elijah has read. Which is why he'd been reading about it to begin with, as he'd been surfing the web for something (he doesn't remember what) musical, and he'd happened upon the reference of it as a tonal language, which had intrigued him enough to click on the link, which had lead to the whole language versus dialect thing, and why it's important, because even though lots of dialects use the same words, the tones used when they are spoken is totally different, which changes the meaning. There had been this one sentence with the word "ma" in it four times, with all of these translations depending on how you said it.

"Ma," he says out loud, and wonders what he's just said in what language.

He wishes he knew what words had gone awry during the conversation with Billy, how they had translated in Billy's head, exactly. What Elijah had done to make them mean something other than what he'd meant them to mean.

He can see Billy sitting with Dom, who is talking with his mouth full and gesturing wildly, in the middle of some kind of oration that has three crew guys, a Craft Services lady, and Andrew all laughing, while Billy concentrates fiercely on his lasagna and doesn't even crack a smile.

Elijah's lasagna is sitting on his tray getting cold because he's been standing there for five minutes pondering Chinese and wondering if he ought to go sit with Dom and Billy (he doesn't see Sean yet, and Viggo and Bean are sitting with Kiran, which means they'll be eating as quickly as possible and trying to get in a game of chess before the break ends) or if that would be too weird or what.

He imagines himself sitting down and saying, "Hi, Billy!" and Billy actually hearing, "I don't want you, Billy!" because he's pretty sure that's what Billy had heard.

Not totally sure, but... sure enough he's almost afraid to say anything else, for fear of making it worse.

He takes his lunch outside (once again removing a sacred tray, and he wonders if maybe they'll stop feeding him if they discover his tray-pilfering ways), making his way out beyond the confines of the set (which is like Saturn, sort of, the set being the planet itself and the detritus that grows up around it, trailers and equipment and Craft Services tent, like the rings around it, so that if you truly want to get all the way out of the vicinity of it, you have to actually hike it a ways) until he finds a patch of grass that's mostly dry from the sunshine.

The lasagna is good, but he only picks at it. He's thinking more than actually eating, anyway, thinking about misunderstanding and translation, and how they have computers that can do translations now, but most of the time translations that are done like that are a little off, they don't come out just right, and having people translate seems to work better because people can make distinctions that computer's can't, can pick out the tone of voice used and the body language, and make sure that the "ma" that is actually meant is the same "ma" that is passed on to the other person, and not one of the other four "ma's." He sort of wishes he could hire a translator for this -- like Viggo, because he thinks Viggo would be a great translator because he wouldn't feel the urge to insert things into the text, whereas Dom, for example, would suck ass, because Dom inserts bits of Dom into everything he does, like there is just so much of him that it rubs off on things -- but he gets that it wouldn't work. It would piss Billy off, for one thing, if Elijah just randomly recruited someone (Viggo!) and got them involved in what was essentially some kind of warped, secret not-affair.

And just to make things more complicated (and depressing), it seems to Elijah that whether Billy wants him -- and Elijah thinks he does, which should be really fucking great, which _is_ , sort of, except for the part where Billy doesn't want to have anything to fucking do with him except when they're actually _doing_ something -- or not, Billy doesn't _want_ to want him, and Billy _wants_ to be straight, and he's just not sure what the hell he's supposed to do about that.

Is that the kind of thing Elijah is supposed to just ignore?

As his friend, it seems like Elijah ought to respect his wishes, right? It seems like he shouldn't press something that clearly has Billy really, genuinely upset like this does, should just let it go, just... what? Just let him be straight? Just forget about the kissing (it's weird how the blow job hardly seems to matter after the kissing, like the kissing is more important somehow) and Billy's hands on his skin, just forget and go on?

He doesn't think he can do it, though. He sort of wishes he could pretend he's got good reasons for that, like the fact that it's clearly unhealthy for Billy to repress this shit, but it's actually a lot simpler and a lot more selfish. He wants Billy. He wants to fuck him, yeah, but mostly he just wants Billy back, wants the sarcasm and the wit and the laughter, and if he can only have that as Billy's friend he can live with that, but he doesn't think he can do that if Billy is going to randomly jump him during unguarded moments alone, doesn't think he has the fortitude to say stop again and again (or even one again, actually, Elijah's fairly sure he'd used up all his fortitude this morning).

And why does it seem like he's the only fucking one trying to figure out how to make things go right? Why does it have to be only him, it's just as much Billy's problem as it is Elijah's. More, maybe, because Billy's the one in the psychological fucking closet, and it doesn't seem fair that every time Elijah gets the door open a little (which is fucking hard enough), Billy retreats back into it and slams it shut. And even though it's pointless to be angry about it, he can't quite help it, and he doesn't really fight it, because it's almost easier to be angry than it is to be so fucking uncertain about things.

When his phone buzzes in Frodo's jacket pocket, he answers with a brief "What?" and notices that there are now ants all over his lasagna, which just pisses him off more, even though it's his own stupid fault for putting his plate down on the ground.

"Hey," Dom says, "where'd you go, mate?"

"Where's Billy?" Elijah asks, and in the pause that follows he can almost hear Dom deciding whether or not to lie to him.

"Elijah," Dom says, "maybe it's better if you two..."

"Dom," Elijah interrupts, "I love you, but I don't want to hear your opinion on it right now."

Dom sighs, and says, "Yeah, neither does he," and then there's the sound of the phone being passed and Billy's voice, faintly questioning, and Elijah's mouth has gone tight and spitless.

"Did you know that there are more than two hundred dialects of Chinese, and that none of them are really dialects?" Elijah says as soon as he hears Billy breathing on the other end of the phone.

"What?" Billy says (and Elijah pictures the look on his face, the puzzled furrow of his brow, and the way his eyes always go unexpectedly round when he's confused, and in spite of everything, it makes him smile). "Chinese?"

"Yeah," Elijah says. "And if you speak Mandarin, you can't understand Cantonese, Billy." _Or Fukienese,_ he adds mentally.

"Elijah, is that supposed to make sense?" Billy asks a little plaintively.

"Yes!" Elijah says, but then... "Okay, well no, not really, but see, that's exactly what I mean. Whatever I say, I know exactly what I mean, right?"

"Yes," Billy says, sounding a little wary. "I suppose so."

Elijah pushes to his feet, because things seem a little easier on his feet, and paces a tight circle around his little patch of grass. "Right, but you don't, not necessarily. Like I might use an Americanism that you aren't familiar with, or maybe I talked too fast, or maybe I was even a little confused and phrased things badly, but the point is, you can never be sure that what you think someone said to you is what they actually meant when they said it. Okay?"

"Okay," Billy says very quietly. "What is this...?"

"Wait, I'm coming to that," Elijah says, and he's aware he's bulldozing over Billy, but he's afraid he'll stall out if he loses momentum, so he forgives himself for it, especially since it seems like Billy is actually _listening_ to him, and that makes it even more important to get it right (and if he'd fucking known that calling him on the phone was the way to make Billy listen, he'd have done it ages ago). "So it goes both ways, of course, and maybe I misunderstood you first, I don't know, but when you said what you said it sounded wrong to me, it sounded bad, like something you said... that first time, you know? And I didn't want things to be like they were that first time, I didn't want it to end up with you doing something you didn't want to do and hating me for it, and thinking that I maybe did something to make you do it, and then you'd be pissed off at me again, only it would be even worse than before, and when I said I didn't want to do that, that's the part I meant, not the part about kissing you and... and I really _did_ want to do that part, I mean I _do_ , but not if you can't still like me afterwards, not if you can't be okay with it, and not if you think I'm only doing it because I'm a slut."

"Elijah," Billy says, and Elijah can hear him walking, probably getting away from all the people on set, and he sounds pained almost. "I don't think... that about you. I shouldn't have said that, I was angry and... I don't."

"Yes you do," Elijah says as gently as he can, and continues on quickly when he hears Billy take a breath to object. "No, it's okay. I understand why you would think so, and I'm not denying anything."

"You're not a slut," Billy says hoarsely.

"Billy," Elijah says as gently as he can, "I'm not stupid you know. Why else would you... do what you did that first night, if you didn't think I'd let you. And I _did_. And this morning... Billy, you've been an asshole all week, but when you kissed me this morning you knew I'd let you, that I'd kiss you back, and why else would you think that after the way things have been?"

"You let me that first night because you were drunk," Billy says, "and I knew you were drunk, and I took advantage of it." His voice is low and quick, almost a hiss. "And today you wanted to make up, I knew you wanted that, how could I fucking not know? You've been trying all week, and the harder you tried the more I tried to keep my distance, but you just don't give up, and this morning there were dark circles under your eyes and your cuticles are fucking ragged, 'Lijah, and I was just going to try and talk to you, I swear, but I could still taste you on my lips and smell you on my clothes and as soon as you looked at me, the way you looked at me, I thought... I..."

"Billy!" Elijah says, alarmed, but Billy cuts him off.

"You let me because I hurt your feelings, because I wanted it and you're the kind of person that wants people to be happy, and I fucking took advantage of that, too," Billy says, husky-deep and heavy and bitter.

"That's not..." Elijah begins, but the line is already dead. "True," he finishes in a whisper, and hits the end button, even though the call has already been ended.

He just stands there for a while, trying to think, but not really succeeding, just watching the ants eat his lasagna and certain that if he tries to call Billy back, he won't answer.

When the phone buzzes in his hand he nearly jumps out of his fucking skin, and his heat pounds heavily in his throat, and even though he means to just say hello, he hears himself say, "Billy?" into the mouthpiece.

"No," Dom says, but he doesn't say anything else about Billy, or about Elijah, or if Billy had said anything to him, or anything. He just says, "You'd better come back, we're about to start."

Elijah retrieves his plate and fork, but he scrapes the lasagna onto the ground for the ants.

* * *

He refuses an invitation to go out with Dom and Orli, in spite of the fact that Orli tries to bribe him by offering to buy all his drinks, promises not to make fun of his dancing, and when that fails, offers a blowjob. He seems genuinely shocked when Elijah turns him down gently, and then surprises the hell out of Elijah by dragging him out of earshot of Billy and Dom by the elbow, and fixing him with a solemn look. "Like that, is it?" he whispers, both eyebrows arched, eyes wide and ingenious. "Seriously?"

"Uh," Elijah says uncertainly.

"Who?" Orli's expression is serious, but he's practically bouncing with excitement.

"Who what?" Elijah asks, but his eyes cut over to Dom and Billy, who are talking softly and walking toward the makeup trailer, and the malevolent anti-Elijah force that's been pretty fucking constant up to this point seems to be on it's coffee break or something, because he's still looking when Billy looks back over his shoulder. Elijah smiles at Billy, and hopes it doesn't look too goofy or hopeful, but he can't help it if it does. His face just has some kind of special Billy setting -- at least when Billy isn't being a shit head -- and he doesn't have any control over it. Billy doesn't smile back, but he doesn't frown either. He just looks at Elijah for a few steps, and then turns back around and continues on.

Shit.

"What?" Orli says, and Elijah turns back to him guiltily, having pretty much forgotten he was still standing there. "Cantonese?"

"Huh?" Elijah says.

"You said Cantonese," Orli tells him, and cocks his head, performing a Legolas hair flip which Elijah is pretty sure is unintentional. "You're in love with a Cantonese person?"

Elijah snorts and rolls his eyes. "I'm not in love with a Cantonese person," he says, and punches Orli on the arm. "Dork."

"Who, then?" Orli demands, rubbing absently at his arm and grinning widely, which just looks funny on Legolas. "C'mon, 'Lij, tell me."

"What makes you think I'm in love with anyone," Elijah evades, and starts walking again. "Maybe I just don't feel like going out tonight."

"Nah, it's not that," Orli says, and jogs a few steps to catch up. "You turned down a _blowjob_."

"Not everyone wants you to blow them, Orli," he says, maybe a little impatiently since Orli's actually closer to being right than Elijah is really comfortable with.

"It's not just me, mate," Orli says confidently. "I mean, I don't mean it's because it's _me_. I just mean that blokes don't turn down blowjobs. They just don't. It's like saying you don't want _beer_. It's anti-man." He slings an arm around Elijah's shoulders. "It's just not done."

"I don't want a blowjob," Elijah says, and slides out from under Orli's arm carefully.

"Not from _me_ , I get that," Orli beams. "Who _do_ you want one from, that's the question."

"Nobody," Elijah blatantly lies, and walks a little faster, because Orli just doesn't give up sometimes, and Elijah doesn't want to talk about... anything. Orli's got stupid long legs, though, and keeps up easily.

"I won't tell anyone," Orli lies (Orli keeps secrets like thirteen year old girls keep secrets), and flings his arm around Elijah's shoulders again.

Elijah ducks out from under his arm again, and this time Orli stops walking and blinks at him for a moment, then his eyes get narrow and squinty and suspicious. "What?" Elijah says.

Orli looks around. "It's someone here, isn't it? You don't want to be seen with my arm around you!" Orli turns in a full circle, scanning the area. "Who is it? Boy or girl? Cast or crew?"

"Animal, vegetable, or mineral?" Elijah snaps. "Is he bigger than a breadbox?"

"It's a he!" Orli crows triumphantly, and peers around again, and the anti-Elijah force really _must_ be on it's coffee break or something because Billy and Dom are already inside the makeup trailer, thank God, because Elijah doesn't even want to imagine what Orli would say if they were still close by.

"Go get de-elfed, you idiot," Elijah says, and pretends a total lack of concern. "The glue is going to your head."

He continues on, just grateful that the Men and the Elf have their own fucking makeup trailer.

"I'll find out," Orli threatens, but doesn't follow him, just as eager to get the wig off as the rest of them are.

Elijah wonders if there is any possible way to bribe Orli into some kind of discretion. Dammit. He hadn't been worried about Dom, because Dom, as obnoxious as he can be (which is very), is also highly empathetic. He's the kind of guy that pulls over if he sees a turtle crossing the road, and gets out and dodges traffic to pick it up and take it where it's going, because it's not enough for Dom not to hit it himself; he needs to make sure no one else hits it either.

It's not that Orli would hit the turtle; of course he wouldn't. Orli would run off the road to avoid hitting the turtle.

And in the process, he'd squash three squirrels, a rabbit, and a kiwi.

Orli isn't unkind, he's just uncoordinated. He's so green he's practically Kermit. It won't occur to him that it could be anyone in their very immediate circle, so he won't think to censor himself. Especially once he's been drinking, dammit.

Elijah sighs and climbs the three metal steps into the trailer.

Billy glances up when Elijah comes in, and then glances down quickly. Elijah sighs and sits down and tries not to think about anything at all, because everything is too complicated and he's just too tired, and how long does it take to fucking _learn_ Cantonese if you already speak Mandarin? Seriously, they're really similar, right? They're considered the same language outside of language experts, more or less, so they've at least got a lot in common.

They use the same written characters, he remembers, and snorts softly. The only way he can see that being helpful if he writes Billy a note.

 _Dear Billy,_ he composes mentally. _You're an idiot (who doesn't speak Mandarin), but I still want to be boyfriends. Love, Elijah._

He's clearly the most pathetic and ridiculous person on the entire planet. _Boyfriends_ , jeez. But it's surprisingly difficult to think of what else he might call it. Lovers sounds... okay, well it sounds good, yeah, but it also sounds like romance novel stuff, or maybe daytime T.V. stuff, or like something someone says on a cop show, when the cop asks what was your relationship with the deceased, and in a dramatic moment of confession you say: "We were lovers!" At least, that's what it sounds like to him. Partner? No, that doesn't really work either. More cop-show connotations, and besides that, it implies long-time commitment-y type stuff, and if Billy's freaked out by a three drunk minutes, the long-time commitment-y stuff is definitely to be avoided.

What else is there?

This whole note-writing thing might turn out to be as complicated as the talking thing after all. He grins a little, because it's funny, but also because while he is being sarcastic (quietly and to himself, but still), he can't deny that he'd probably try it if he thought it would work. It's the total suck that this should have to be so fucking complicated.

It hadn't been complicated with Dom. It hadn't been complicated with Orli. It hadn't been complicated with Ian (well, it had, sort of, but in a totally different way that had to do with Elijah not being exactly sure where to put his hands and the fact that Ian was too fucking _tall_ , which was a matter of execution more than anything else, really). And with Sean, it had sort of been an accident. An accidentally-on-purpose, anyway. The oh-hey-I-didn't-realize-you-were-in-here-mostly-naked-but-since-you-are-let-me-just-get-mostly-naked-too kind of accidentally-on-purpose.

In any case, he hadn't had to put any real effort into making it happen (not counting Ian, and again, totally different sort of effort having to do with wheedling and promising that he'd always use a condom and that he wouldn't take candy from strangers), and there hadn't been any communication issues to speak of.

Elijah wonders if Billy is aware that Ian, Sean, Dom, and Orli all speak Mandarin, and he's the only jerk stubbornly clinging to Cantonese.

On the other hand, it's not really the same anyway. If it was just sex... well, technically, he's already succeeded.

That's the difference, he supposes.

He steals a glance at Billy just in time to see Billy look quickly back down at the paperback in his hands.

He bites down on his bottom lip to keep from smiling and looks away. He can't think of Billy sneaking looks at him as anything but a good thing, because if Billy is looking at him, Billy is thinking about him, and if Billy is thinking about him, then Billy hasn't dismissed him entirely, and even though the whole thing is way more complicated than Elijah really wants it to be, and even though Billy doesn't understand Mandarin (yet), and even though Billy is a stupid jerk (took advantage of him, indeed, come on, he hasn't been taken advantage of since he was nine and learned how to cry at will), it's better than it was before, and that's better than nothing.

And since it's better than it was before, it's not _totally_ outside the realm of possibility that it could get even better.

If Billy wants it to.

He resists the urge to look at Billy again.

"Dom!" Orli cries, and Elijah nearly falls out of his chair (Maria grabs his arm to keep him from overbalancing, and he'd say thank you but he's too busy panicking, and besides, she's making a low, sort of growling sound in her throat that sort of discourages thank you's) whirling around to glare as Orli catapults himself into the trailer, because Orli isn't supposed to be in here, and he's still half-elf for fuck's sake, and Elijah's brain flails madly for some way of making sure Orli doesn't actually speak, but before he can come up with anything, Orli does (of course, the anti-Elijah force of doom must be back on duty). "Dom, make Elijah come out with us tonight!"

Elijah turns to Dom so quickly he nearly headbutts Maria (uh oh, she's making that noise again), and tries desperately to send Dom psychic instructions to shut Orli the fuck up and get him the hell out of Dodge, but Dom isn't even looking at Elijah, he's looking at Orli with his forehead all wrinkled up in bemusement, smiling slightly (so he must not sense the psychic blast of horror Elijah is trying to send his way, dammit), and Dom says, "Why?"

Elijah clamps down on the urge to scream.

"I want to get him drunk and grill him about his love life," Orli explains enthusiastically, long arms gesturing in a way that doesn't seem to be connected to what he's actually saying.

"Shut the fuck up!" Elijah says (somewhat shrilly), and lunges forward to grab at Orli, but Maria catches a handful of his shirt and jerks him back into his seat.

"If you move again, I swear to God, Elijah, I'm just going to pour the solvent on your head."

Elijah stills obediently -- he believes her -- but gives Orli a look that is either pleading or threatening, he isn't exactly sure which.

"Don't be so sensitive, mate," Orli grins, still gesturing (it looks like he's impersonating a conductor or something, with all that hand waving) inexplicably. "Just come out with us and I'll leave you alone about your new boyfriend, whoever he is."

 _Shit! Fuck fuck fuck, shit!_ Elijah thinks, and can't quite stop himself from looking at Billy.

Billy isn't looking back this time, or even looking away just as Elijah looks over. He's intent on the book in his hands, and Elijah can't see enough of his face to tell anything from it.

 _Shit!_ Elijah thinks again.

Orli says, "You coming, Billy boy?" and Elijah is pretty sure he'd kill Orli if he weren't afraid that doing so would result in being summarily executed by Maria for the heinous crime of moving around too much while she's trying to get his wig off.

"Sure," Billy says without looking up from his book, and Elijah's panic grows to previously undreamt of dimensions.

He _can't_ let Orli and Billy get drunk together without being there to run interference, there's no fucking telling what Orli will say, and the last thing on Earth he wants to do is freak Billy out further now, or maybe worse, piss him off again (because Billy _has_ been known to misunderstand things, for fuck's sake, even things which _should_ be pretty fucking obvious to Elijah's way of thinking), and if he gets the chance, he's going to fucking trip Orli on the dance floor and hope he's trampled to fucking death.

"See, 'Lij," Orli beams. "All your friends are doing it! Come on, it'll be ages before we get another chance to get smashed without having to film the next day. You'll regret it if you let this opportunity pass you by. Give into the peer pressure, give in!"

"I hate you, Orli," Elijah says, with feeling.

Orli laughs. The fucker. "You're coming, then?"

"Okay," Elijah agrees miserably.

* * *

Elijah has had three beers in twenty minutes, which is how much it had taken to make him be able to sit across from Billy at the table without wanting to crawl across it and plonk himself down in Billy's lap.

Okay, that isn't true, he still wants to do that. But three beers had been enough to take the edge off of the desire to do it enough to ignore it, and now he's concentrating on Orli instead, because Orli is doing shots, and the only thing worse than Orli guzzling beer and harassing Elijah about his love life is Orli doing shots and harassing Elijah about his love life. Except he isn't harassing, at least not yet. He's downed three fruity drinks and several shots of something green (and probably melon flavored, Orli has no tolerance for alcohol that tastes like alcohol, which is sort of funny considering he holds his liquor almost as well as Billy, which isn't at all fair), and while Elijah feels pretty sure he should be grateful that he's apparently forgotten about harassing him about his love life, he's having a hard time actually _feeling_ grateful, because instead of harassing, he's pawing at Billy.

Unfortunately, Elijah doesn't really know how to stop him from doing that in any way that wouldn't make it blatantly obvious that Elijah was trying to stop him from doing that. And he can't do that. Obviously.

Orli's got an arm slung comfortably around Billy's shoulders, and Orli's long-fingered hand is messing with Billy's collar and Orli's grinning mouth about three inches from Billy's cheek, and Orli's _other_ hand is somewhere out of sight under the table, and while Elijah's sure that doesn't mean anything, he can't keep from trying to figure out exactly what it _is_ doing, which is just irritating. Why should he care what Orli's hand is doing? _Billy_ doesn't seem to care what Orli's hand is doing.

Billy's got a bourbon on the rocks (possibly the most disgusting drink Elijah can imagine, straight bourbon and ice cubes, nothing to cut the truly vile flavor, it even fucking smells like ass) in front of him, but he hasn't done much in the way of drinking, and Elijah isn't sure if he's glad or disappointed. Drunken Billy has proven to be a lot more relaxed than sober Billy, and things are likely to go a lot more smoothly if Billy gets toasted. Or at least maybe Billy won't remember whatever crap Orli spews out tonight when he wakes in the morning. On the other hand, drunken Billy has also proven to be a lot gayer than sober Billy, and the last thing Elijah wants is for Billy to start feeling twinges of gay while Orli is rubbing on him.

He scowls into his glass of beer, and wonders where Dom has got off to. If Dom was here, Dom could distract Orli. Dom is good with distraction.

Elijah is not as good with distraction, which he proves by demanding, "Why aren't you dancing?"

Orli and Billy both turn to look at him with twin expressions of wary puzzlement, and Elijah wants to throw something at one of them (Orli).

"The music hasn't started yet, Elijah," Orli says slowly, and he's frowning at Elijah suspiciously again. "Live band, remember? You're the one that suggested this."

Elijah had, yeah, because the thought had been live band equals too noisy for conversation. He'd failed to take into consideration that the band wouldn't start until somewhat late. Any self-respecting club would have filler music, but this one doesn't, at least not at the moment. The only thing this one has is some assholes dicking around on the stage with the sound equipment, occasionally whapping the mic and causing a teeth-grinding whine of feedback.

"Right," Elijah says with some teeth-grinding of his own, and looks around for Dom, mostly just as an excuse not to look at Orli draped all over Billy.

 _Okay, this is stupid,_ he thinks. _I'm not jealous._ Except he is, of course.

"Where's Dom?" Billy asks (most likely in all innocence), and Elijah squashes down a fresh burst of jealousy (which he is no longer going to be, thank you very much) as well as the urge to point out to Billy that _he_ is sitting right across the table. Which isn't fair, of course, because at least Billy isn't ignoring him entirely, even if he isn't exactly letting Elijah lounge on him (like Orli still is, stupid fucker), and things are maybe a little weird, but a little weird is about three thousand times better than they had been, which was agonizing, so he really shouldn't be feeling so grumpy about the whole thing.

It's juvenile and totally unfair, so he makes and effort to answer Billy. "Bathroom?" he guesses, and shrugs one shoulder, and Billy glances at him, but then Orli steals Billy's drink and finishes it in several long swallows, and Billy turns to look at Orli instead.

Billy smiles and rolls his eyes. "Wanker," he says fondly. "Now go get me another."

"Dom's on it," Orli says, gesturing vaguely, and Elijah sees that Dom is, indeed, on it, walking back toward them with his hands full of drinks, weaving his way through the throng of people carefully. "I was just being a mate! Finishing your drink for you before Dom sees you've barely touched it and takes the piss out of you for it. 'S what mates do, man," he grins, and plants a sloppy kiss on Billy's cheek.

Billy wipes at his cheek, an exaggerated moue of disgust curling his pretty mouth, and Elijah is torn between the desire to stare at the evocative curl of lips and the desire to kick Orli under the table. He attempts to execute both, unwisely, and Billy jumps, startled, his eyes going wide and surprised. "Oi!" he says (his mouth a round "o" which is just too much, so Elijah averts his eyes). "Did you just kick me, Elwood?"

"Er, sorry," Elijah says. "Foot's asleep." But he hasn't missed the fact that Billy just called him Elwood for the first time in ages, and he can't quite keep from grinning, and even better, Billy smiles back (albeit a little warily, still, but what the hell does he expect, he did just kick Billy under the table).

"Order up," Dom says, and Elijah helps him unload drinks (it's either that or end up with a lap full of beer, which might help solve the problem that staring at Billy's mouth had started to create, but would make for an uncomfortable evening). When he passes Billy his bourbon, Billy's fingertips brush up against his for a moment, and Elijah's hand develops an unprecedented twitch, sloshing bourbon over the rim of the tumbler.

"Fuck me, I'm sorry!" he says, dismayed, and stands up to lean over the table and mop at the spilled alcohol with a pile of already slightly soggy cocktail napkins. "Damn, I suck!"

"No," Billy says, mildly, swiping at the spill with some soggy napkins of his own, "that was me."

 _Uh..._ Elijah thinks, and he tries to stop his eyes from climbing from the table to Billy's face, he really does, but he can't quite manage it.

"Uh," Elijah says, and Billy's eyes are mellow and green (green leaves, green glass, green emeralds, oh man, those are some really green fucking eyes) and Billy's lips are a gentle upward curve (eyes, lips, eyes, lips, Elijah can't decide where to look), and holy fuck, did Billy just _flirt_ with him?

Or wait, did he just mean that the spilt drink was his fault, and not Elijah's?

"Uh," Elijah says yet again, and he can feel his cheeks heating up, and maybe it would be a good idea to sit back down now, so that his face isn't only six inches or so from Billy's (lips), and so that he can maybe see something of Billy's expression other than his eyes and his mouth, get some perspective on it, yeah, that would be good, but he just keeps standing there and there's no telling how long he'd have stayed like that, thinking he ought to sit down, his left hand braced against the tabletop to support his weight, his right hand full of clammy, bourbon-flavored napkins, and his attention completely captured by Billy's eyes-mouth-eyes, but Orli snickers.

"You gonna kiss him, or what, mate?" he inquires mockingly, clearly not serious, but a little nova of panic ignites itself in Elijah's brain anyway, sending jittering messages urging a hasty retreat to every muscle in his body.

Elijah recoils so quickly it could be considered a fall, and thank God for Dom, who grabs Elijah and maneuvers him into his seat. He catches Elijah's hand and removes the wad of boozy napkins and tosses them on the tabletop as well -- Elijah had forgotten he was holding them, and now his hand probably smells like ass -- and then slings and arm around Elijah's shoulders, pulling Elijah into his side. "Nah, he's gonna kiss me," Dom says, and leans in to do so, and Elijah knows Dom is just trying to help, trying to distract (which Dom is really good at) everyone present from Elijah's bizarre behavior, and he really does appreciate it, it's just that he can't quite make himself be still and let Dom kiss him because he has this idea that it would be bad, that maybe it would be Billy going all thin-lipped and blank bad, or maybe he only hopes that, maybe he only hopes that Billy gives a shit who Elijah kisses.

Either way, it doesn't matter, because Elijah dodges the kiss sort of automatically, so that it lands on his temple instead of his mouth, and hopes that it doesn't look as awkward as it felt doing it. Dom presses his lips there for a moment, on the sensitive skin right at Elijah's hairline, and then shifts a little so that their heads are tipped together. He feels Dom's hand slide over the top of his where it's resting on his knee, squeeze for a moment, and then slide away, and then Dom is pressing a slickcold bottle into Elijah's hand, and Elijah drinks, grateful for the excuse to tip his head back and close his eyes.

He spends exactly three seconds wondering if he'd just freaked Billy totally out -- and thinking how weird it is that he'd been staring right at Billy's eyes, but has no idea whether or not Billy had actually been looking back, he'd been too fucking distracted to tell -- before Orli says: "So, now you're dodging PDA from Dom, too," his voice some kind of cross between smug and perplexed, and Elijah has time to think how aggravating it is that Orli is so fucking likable even when you sort of want to choke him. "So, you've got to tell us, mate. If you're not shagging us anymore, who're you shagging?"

Elijah chokes on his beer and spends the next thirty seconds doubled over and coughing while Dom pounds him between the shoulder blades like he's got a fucking filet mignon stuck in his windpipe instead of approximately an ounce of beer. He eventually manages to wave Dom off, and breathing is a lot easier -- even with the coughing -- when someone isn't slapping the breath out of you twice a second.

"All right, Elwood?" Dom asks once the worst of it is past, and Elijah manages a nod and wipes at his streaming eyes with a cocktail napkin that had somehow managed to avoid being dipped in spilt bourbon.

"Yeah, fine, I'm good," Elijah lies, and tries to come up with something to say in response to Orli, or something to change the subject, or just anything at all would do really, but the only thing he can think of is: "I'm not shagging anyone," which isn't actually exactly right -- or it is, but it isn't -- and as soon as he says it he wishes he hadn't, especially because Orli leans into Billy and stage-whispers into his ear.

"He turned down a _blowjob_." Orli leans back and gives Billy a look -- okay, so maybe the female of the species doesn't have the exclusive on the significant looks, or maybe Orli is the exception that proves the rule or something -- indicating clearly that he thinks that Elijah turning down a blowjob is improbable bordering on impossible.

"Did he now," Billy says, but he sounds like he doesn't get what that has to do with the price of tea in China, and he's giving Orli a sort of bemused look.

"It's not that big a deal," Elijah says lamely, because he can't think of what else to say, and he's afraid Orli will feel the need to explain it to Billy the way he'd explained it to Elijah earlier, which is the last thing Elijah wants, and he can't remember why he thought it had been a good idea to come out with them now, because it's pretty fucking clear that he's absolute shit at derailing incriminating and uncomfortable conversations.

"'Course not," Dom agrees casually, and shoves Orli's drink -- another fruity concoction with a green shot chaser -- across the table toward him. "Here's your fucking fruit punch, you poncy twat." _Hooray for Dom, master of distraction_ , Elijah thinks when Orli makes a face at Dom and wraps one hand (the one that had been lurking under the table, Elijah sees) around the glass.

"It's a sex on the beach, ignorant Manc," Orli says, and takes a swallow. "Which we can do tomorrow after surfing!" He beams and leers at Dom simultaneously, and Elijah starts to relax a little. Prematurely, it turns out. "Except Elijah, of course," Orli adds, "he's not allowed to join in any reindeer games. Don't want to make his boyfriend jealous."

"I don't have a boyfriend," Elijah mutters, and stares at his beer while gripping it with both hands, because he's a little afraid his hands will rebel and throw the bottle at Orli's head or something.

"Yeah, tell me another one," Orli scoffs teasingly, and Elijah's starting to feel a little sick, like maybe he's going to throw up, and yeah, this was a bad idea, should have just gone home, should have just let Orli do whatever, because at least then he wouldn't have had to be physically present to witness it.

"Orli," Dom says, and his voice is stern and forbidding, "just leave it alone, yeah?"

"What?" Orli asks, all innocence (and the thing is, the really fucking irritating thing is, he really _is_ all innocence, he really has no idea that he's fucking _killing_ Elijah). "I'm just saying!" Then, "He's still invited, of course," and Elijah really cannot believe the utter and complete lack of comprehension, he really can't.

"I'm going to…" Elijah says, gesturing in the general direction of where he thinks the bathrooms are, and stands up. He can't bring himself to look at Billy, can't even quite look toward him, so he fumbles blindly to put his beer on the table, and he lets go before it's quite steady. He hears it fall, and hears the contents spattering off the edge of the table and onto the floor, and dammit, could he be any more fucking awkward and obvious here?

"I've got it," Dom says, "you go on," and Elijah's never been more grateful for Dom in his entire life.

* * *

Soul-searching always seems to happen to Elijah in the restroom; it's one of life's real mysteries, like the pyramids at Giza, the Bermuda triangle, and why the peanut butter in Reese's Pieces doesn't taste the same as the peanut butter in Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Or possibly it's just because there isn't anything (like breasts with teeth) drawn on the wall for him to look at and ponder, so he's stuck pondering his own stupidity. He stands at the urinal for what seems like a year before he is actually relaxed enough to piss.

Sometimes when he's really trying to think about something, he can't quite get his mind around it. He's always sort of thought it was some kind of avoidance, like a defense mechanism of some sort. If that's the case, it's not operating properly at the moment.

Or maybe avoidance just isn't possible when things are as blatantly fucked up as this whole situation.

The facts are pretty simple.

At some point -- he's not really sure when, which is actually a little scary -- the thing with Billy had become something more (or maybe just something different) than friendship and more complicated than simple desire. He wants to make excuses as to why he hadn't actually noticed this happening, things like he feels differently about _all_ of them, that his friendship with Billy is different from his friendship with Dom, which is different from his friendship with Viggo, which is different with his friendship with Ian, and so on. And maybe it has to do with the fact that the way he feels about pretty much all of them includes some element of physical attraction, maybe that had helped to confuse the issue, and maybe it's just that he's young and moderately stupid. _Blame it on the moon_ , the thinks bitterly, and shakes his head.

He thinks the truth is fairly selfish.

He thinks he hadn't really noticed because he's eighteen and basically horny all the time, and he's been pretty consistently thinking with his hard-on, letting lust override he other things, which, in retrospect, seem a hell of a lot more important, sort of like the kisses from earlier in the day seem a lot more important than the blowjob last week.

There are two serious complications attendant on this change in circumstance and emotion (which he thinks would be an excellent name for a band), as well as a host of lesser ones that Elijah dismisses as irrelevant, at least compared to The Big Two.

The first one is that Billy isn't gay (or bi, Elijah would happily settle for bi), according to Billy himself. Whether or not this is true (Elijah has to admit, it seems suspect in light of recent events) hardly seems to factor. Billy not being gay (or bi) and Billy not _wanting_ to be gay (or bi) pretty much boil down to the same problem. Billy doesn't like guys and Elijah (despite some opinions to the contrary), is a guy.

The other one is that even if Billy has some kind of miraculous change of heart about the whole not liking guys thing, well... That doesn't necessarily mean that Billy feels about Elijah the way Elijah feels about him (and Elijah is aware that he's not actually willing to put a name to how he feels, at least not yet, and he guesses it has something to do with not wanting to admit to anything that could potentially lead to being broken-hearted, and if he doesn't say it or think it, if he doesn't let it into his head, maybe he can keep it from being that big a deal to his heart, which is stupid, he knows it, but still seems to make a twisted kind of sense).

It seems safest by far to assume that Billy -- if he wants anything from Elijah at all, something that Elijah isn't willing to bet the bank on -- probably just wants to fuck.

Elijah tucks himself back into his jeans and takes the four steps over to the sink to wash his hands with soap from the dispenser that smells a little like chlorine bleach. Which he guesses is better than smelling like piss and bourbon, but maybe not by much. Also, there doesn't seem to be any hot water -- both taps run ice cold -- and the little lever on the paper towel dispenser appears to be jammed. "This day sucks," Elijah mutters, trying to get a good grip on the lever with dripping hands, which backfires spectacularly when his hand slips and a jagged edge on the motherfucking thing rips a chunk out of his right index finger. "You son of a bitch!" Elijah snarls, and slams the heel of his palm into the bastarding thing, and when that isn't quite satisfying enough, he doubles his injured hand into a fist and punches the plastic hard enough that it gives a very loud and satisfying _crack_ , and a lighter color fissure appears in the smoke-colored canopy protecting the paper towels inside.

"Ow," he mutters, shaking his hand, and only then notices that he's flinging droplets of blood everywhere from the fucking trench the fucking thing had dug in his finger, and he's so furiously indignant about that that he hits it again. This time, instead of a viscerally pleasing _crack_ , he gets a clunky, cranky mechanical _ca-chunk_ , and the cracked plastic of the canopy pops open, dangling loose from the hinges at the bottom. The industrial roll of crappy public restroom paper towels shoots out as if launched from the interior (like an automatic self-defense mechanism, he has time to think bemusedly, and if he'd been standing six inches to the right the roll would have hit him square between the eyes) and since the end of the roll is still fed into the machine it spools out a long, unperforated sheet of paper towel (towels? towel? since there is no delineation between sheets, the singular seems appropriate, but it sounds weird in Elijah's head) before striking the opposite wall and tumbling into a urinal.

 _Huh,_ Elijah thinks, and for a moment he just stands there, dripping blood onto his jeans and at a loss for what to do now that he's killed the paper towel dispenser. The victory seems pretty fucking hollow, actually, and the only thing he can think to do is beat feet and hope no one notices he was the last person to see the paper towel dispenser alive. Sometimes retreat isn't an option, and sometimes it's the _only_ option.

So he turns his back on the row of sinks and takes two steps toward the door before he notices that Billy is standing there watching him, and he experiences such an overwhelming wave of deja vu induced vertigo that he has to clutch at one of the sinks for balance, only he's moved too far away and ends up clutching at empty air, stumbling a step or two backward, and falling flat on his ass with his injured hand held out in front of him protectively.

" _Motherfucker,_ " he snarls, and if he kept a journal like Dom, he could begin today's entry with: _Dear Diary, Today has been the most painfully humiliating day in my whole fucking life._ For the second time in less than a week, he's mortified to discover that he's so angry that he's close to tears (okay, so he'd been rather more than close to tears the last time, but that's neither here nor there). He gets his left hand behind him for leverage, intent on getting to his feet and getting the hell out of the bathroom of epic fucking evil before anything else happens, and then he sees Billy's feet approaching (he can only see Billy from about mid-thigh down, and he's not really willing to try and see any higher), and he scoots backward across the (probably filthy, dammit) floor instead, and he's not even sure why, except goddammit, sometimes retreat is the _only_ option, and he just doesn't think he can take much more of this fucking day.

Billy's feet pursue him -- and Billy doesn't say anything at all, which could be good, could be bad, it's all relative, and maybe he should thank John for installing that turn of phrase so firmly in Elijah's head -- and then Billy slides his hands under Elijah's arms and pulls him up to his feet like a toddler that's taken a tumble, which just triggers another irrational burst of red rage in Elijah's brain. He jerks out of Billy's grasp, staggering a little as he tries to catch his balance, and offers up a brief prayer of thanks when he manages to keep his feet and stand under his own power.

 _What are you doing here?_ is on the tip of his tongue, but it stays there, unuttered, because Billy catches his right hand and turns it, examining Elijah's injured finger, and all the spit in Elijah's mouth dries up, a response to Billy's warm hands on Elijah's skin and the look on Billy's face, which Elijah can't avoid seeing now that he's upright and his eyes are level with it. Billy frowns at down at Elijah's bloody hand -- _It was an accident,_ Elijah wants to say, _I didn't do it randomly assaulting the paper towel dispenser in a fit or rage, the paper towel dispenser started it!_ , but he manages to bite those words back, thank God, because really, they're the epitome of dumb -- and before Elijah really realizes it, Billy has tugged him over to the line of sinks and is running Elijah's hand under the tap, making the cut on his finger smart madly.

He can smell Billy this close, fabric softener and spicy cologne and bourbon, which doesn't seem to smell quite so much like ass when it's mixed with the rest of Billy's smells, and it takes him several seconds to notice that he's leaned in so close to Billy that he's nearly resting his chin on Billy's shoulder and he can feel Billy's hair tickling his forehead. He pulls back quickly, but Billy doesn't seem to notice, intent on Elijah's hand, which he's cleaning dried, maroonish splotches of blood from with the pad of his thumb, wet with tap water. Elijah sees that the knuckles of Billy's right hand are skinned up, and there's a greenish bruise circling the knob of knuckle at the base of his ring finger.

 _Now we match,_ he thinks, looking at his own reddened -- not scraped up, though, as apparently the plastic of the paper towel dispenser is kinder to knuckles than the plaster of Dom's wall -- knuckles, and his throat feels like he's swallowed a huge bite of something without chewing it well enough, and it's now firmly lodged about midway down. He swallows hard, and hears a sound like a little click, but it doesn't do any good.

"Is it true?" Billy asks, startling Elijah so much after the long silence that he jumps and looks at Billy in the mirror in front of them. Billy isn't looking back, though, he's still working on Elijah's hand, his face tipped down, his brow furrowed in concentration. Elijah glances down at his hand, and sees that the blood is all washed away, and the cut on his finger is pink and raw looking. The edges look oddly curled, maybe from the cold water, but the pad of Billy's thumb is still rubbing at the webbing between Elijah's forefinger and thumb, even though it's now clean and blood-free. Elijah decides not to mention this, not because it feels particularly good -- his hand is so numbed with cold that he can barely feel it at all -- but because Billy seems to need something to concentrate on, and it he doesn't want to take away the things that Billy needs.

So he doesn't mention it, and he doesn't pretend not to understand, even though he doesn't really understand totally. Is it true that he has a boyfriend or is it true that he wants to or is it true that he isn't shagging Dom and/or Orli anymore, or what? It's a pretty vague question.

And he can't help but wonder why Billy is even asking. And why Billy had come in here, anyway.

"Not exactly," Elijah says, which is a pretty vague answer, too, but is really the best he can do under the circumstances.

"Look," Billy says, but without looking himself, "if you're not... well, if it's because of what I said... I mean... don't stop... with Dom and Orli because of what I said, okay? I was out of line, and I... I'm really sorry about that. It's none of my business, and besides that, it's not even true. Two partners isn't that many."

Apparently, the question had been is it true that he isn't fucking Dom and Orli anymore. Elijah doesn't say anything for long moments, just concentrates his attention on squashing down the mix of disappointment (of course that was the question, and why does he keep doing this to himself, why doesn't he just fucking deal? Billy is _not interested_ in guys, and even if he does sort of want... something, it's a pretty fucking huge step from physical attraction to being in... to wanting to be with... well, to anything _real_ , and the longer Elijah clings to hope of that or anything like it, the worse it's going to be in the long run) and anger (because it's a back-handed apology at best, isn't it, especially since the count is off by more than half, and Billy hadn't even fucking included _himself_ in that number, which makes things fairly fucking clear that Elijah doesn't count on Billy's tally of partners either) bubbling in his belly.

"When I was your age, I'd have done the same if I'd had the chance," Billy is saying, and that's just it, that's the last fucking straw. He can take a lot, he _has_ fucking taken a lot over the last week, but he's not fucking standing here and listening to Billy patronize him. He jerks his hand out of Billy's grasp and turns away. He rips the paper towel strip away from where it's still attached to the dispenser and tears himself off a piece on the end furthest from the urinal, and devotes his attention to drying his hand. "Elijah?" Billy says uncertainly, and tension drills into the space between Elijah's shoulder blades, and there's a hot splinter of nausea inducing hurt lodged in Elijah's chest.

"How many is too many?" he asks tightly, and he's grateful that his voice sounds okay, not all mangled and broken by having to force its way out through whatever is blocking his throat. He turns to look at Billy, and Billy looks away quickly, toward the sink, and after a moment he reaches out and turns off the tap. "Just so I'll know, like, for future reference, Bill."

"Elijah," he says, but then he doesn't seem to know what else to say. He just stands there, not looking at Elijah, and that just fucking makes him madder, that Billy won't even fucking _look_ at him.

"How about four?" Elijah asks. "That's twice what you say isn't too many. That's not counting _you_ , of course, since apparently we get to choose who counts and who doesn't. Or maybe it's only three, since there was no actual intercourse involved with Sean, and I'm fairly sure he rationalizes it that way himself. Or maybe it _is_ only two, since Ian was just so I didn't have to learn from someone clumsy or careless, because I was a little fucking scared and I knew Ian would be good to me, but he's got a boyfriend now, and it was always understood that it was just a one time thing, so maybe he doesn't fucking count either. What the fuck do you know, Billy, you're right. It _is_ only two. I'm not a slut. Halle-fucking-lujah."

And he should stop, he knows he should, he feels almost sick with fury and with disgust at himself, and Billy now has his eyes closed as well as his face averted, and he looks really pale, and Elijah really hadn't meant to attack him like this, he really hadn't, but for fuck's sake, he feels like he's going to choke to death on his own fury, and he can't seem to stop it from spilling out even though he knows, he _knows_ it's only going to make things worse, and he's dangerously close to tears again, it's best if he just leaves, he should just go, but instead he says. "I fucking count you, though," and this time his voice is strangled and broken by the fight to get past whatever is caught in Elijah's throat (he thinks it may be his heart, which is trite and stupid, but hey, there you go). "Which makes it three, and if three is the magic number, I can fucking live with being a slut."

He turns and walks out.

Billy doesn't follow him, and he hates himself a little for even thinking that he might have.

* * *

Dom takes one look at him, and stands up. "I'll take you home," he says, but he glances past Elijah toward the bathroom, and Elijah knows he's just as worried about Billy as he is about Elijah.

"No," he says. "I'll get a taxi or something."

"Don't be stupid, I can take you," Dom objects.

"I'd rather you didn't," Elijah says gently, which isn't exactly true, but sometimes you lie to yourself (to make yourself feel better), and sometimes you lie to others (to make _them_ feel better), and sometimes you just lie (and everybody knows it) because lying is a kind of retreat, a retreat from reality, and sometimes retreat is the only motherfucking option. "I kind of want to be alone, anyway, Sblomie."

Orli opens his mouth, looking at Elijah with his head slightly cocked (like dogs look at you when you've confused the shit out of them, like if they could talk, they'd be saying _What the fuck?_ ), then closes it without speaking. He frowns, and Elijah can practically hear the wheels in his head turning. He smiles faintly at the notion, and thinks about how funny it is to be so numb that he can't quite tell when he thinks something is funny until his lips smile all on their own.

Or maybe he doesn't think it's funny at all. Maybe smiling is just a nervous reaction. He'd read somewhere that monkeys laugh when they're nervous.

"Hey," Dom says, and Elijah feels Dom's long fingers curl around his elbow. "Hey, where are you?"

Dom's eyes are dark with worry, and Elijah doesn't know how to answer that question. _Nowhere_ , he thinks. _I'm nowhere, and I don't know how to get back._ "I'm here," is what he says, though. "I'm okay. It's okay." The lie comes to his tongue with unforgivable ease, and he wonders if it's going to be like this from now on, lying to himself and to Dom, his best fucking friend, the best friend he's ever had, because telling the truth is just too hard, makes him want to scream and hit and puke and cry. Lying because there's nothing else to do, and there's no reason to make it that much harder for everyone by telling the truth.

He's never been much of a liar -- his mom had always said his eyes give him away, which is just another reason to hate them, on top of the standard too big, too blue, too nearsighted, too different -- and the idea of doing that, living that, makes him feel tired.

"Elijah," Dom says. "'Lijah, hey..." But he just makes a helpless gesture, and Elijah totally understands. What the hell can you say?

"You can't always get what you want," Elijah says, totally without irony or amusement, though he's glad to see the slight twist of a smile it gets from Dom.

"Yeah," Dom says, and enfolds Elijah in a hug, a Dominic-special, and maybe Dom's hugs can't make everything all right the way they had been able to, once, not that long ago, but they do still help some. He's not surprised to feel Dom's lips, warm and soft, against his temple, or to hear him murmur, "But you get what you need, mate. Promise."

He nods against Dom's shoulder, and when Dom pulls back, he smiles without feeling it again. "Make sure he's..." Elijah says, but he doesn't know how to finish that sentence _(... okay_ or _... as miserable as I am_ or _... not blaming everything on himself_ or just _... not alone_ ), so he just shrugs. Dom nods and lets go of Elijah's elbow, and Elijah watches him make his way through the tables and the people, but he turns away before Dom gets to the bathroom door.

"Lij?" Orli says softly, his voice an uncertain quaver. "Man, Lij, I'm so fuckin' sorry..." He spreads his hands, palms up, like he's surrendering, or expecting Elijah to hit him and has decided not to fight back or something. "I didn't realize, man, I'm so fucking stupid."

He seems close enough to tears to genuinely alarm Elijah, which proves to be an almost welcome distraction from the miserable self-pity lurking in his chest, threatening to overwhelm him now that the anger seems to have abandoned him completely. "You're not stupid," Elijah says, and slides into the seat next to Orli, even though he's really ready to go, really wants to get out of here before Dom and Billy come out of the bathroom. He slides an arm around Orli's shoulders, and Orli presses his forehead to Elijah's collar bone, hunching almost double to do it. "It's just a thing, Orli, you didn't do anything wrong."

"I did, though," Orli mutters, and curls his arms around his own chest, so Elijah wraps both of his around Orli, arms and all, and does his best to give Orli the kind of hug that Dom would give. "I'm a fucking idiot."

"Yeah, but you're our idiot," Elijah says, and brushes his lips against the top of Orli's prickly mohawk, a la Dom.

Orli manages a brief laugh, gusting warm breath against Elijah's chest, "Yeah, I guess," he says, and sits up. "I'll take you home, yeah?" he asks hopefully, and it's clear that he feels bad and wants to somehow make up for it. Elijah doesn't have the heart to turn him down.

"Yeah, okay," he agrees, and waits for Orli to toss some bills onto the table, watching the bathroom door nervously from the corner of his eye.

When Orli says he'll take him home, what he really means is that he'll stand out in the street with Elijah while he chain-smokes (and glances over his shoulder at the entrance of the club approximately every fifteen seconds, uncertain of whether or not he's hoping for or dreading the possibility that Billy might come out, and he really is pathetic, apparently, who the fuck knew?), hail a cab when one finally drives by, and ride in the backseat with Elijah until they get to his place, shifting around nervously during the whole ride while Elijah stares out the window, clearly wishing he could think of something to say, but unable to actually do so. Elijah's fairly grateful that Orli can't think of anything to say, and maybe that's a little mean, but he really doesn't feel like talking about it.

He really isn't mad at Orli -- it's hard as hell to be mad at Orli, even though he sometimes deserves it, because Orli is the kind of guy you could call to bail you out of jail at three a.m. on a Sunday morning, even if you hadn't spoken to him in six months and you'd parted on bad terms because you'd ruined his favorite ugly shirt, fucked his girlfriend, killed his goldfish, wrecked his car, and set fire to his living room carpet; Orli just doesn't hold grudges, and he's about as sweet-natured as a person can be, and he never means any harm, and truthfully he rarely causes any, and besides that Elijah loves him -- but he still doesn't really want to chitchat with him right at the moment.

"I could come in," Orli offers when the cab stops, and Elijah gets out. He leans out of the backseat with one hand curled around the doorframe and his face full of earnest remorse, and Elijah almost says _Yeah, c'mon in if you want,_ but he thinks maybe Orli doesn't know how to offer comfort without that involving sex (which wouldn't have been a problem a couple of weeks ago, wouldn't have even seemed odd to Elijah, and it's weird how he can't quite explain, even to himself, how that used to be okay), and he suspects he doesn't have the fortitude to turn away an Orli that is really intent on comforting him.

"I don't think it's a good idea," Elijah says instead, and Orli nods, not looking particularly surprised, though his forehead crumples into little ridges and brackets edge his mouth as he frowns.

"I sort of thought you'd say that," he says solemnly. "Man... I'm sorry. I'm really fucking sorry."

Elijah sighs. "It's nothing you did, you know," he says. "He doesn't really know... I mean, I don't think he really gets it, anyway. The thing in the bathroom... it wasn't really because of anything you said."

Orli just looks at him for long moments. "If you say so," he says dubiously, and grabs Elijah's hand. "Does he...?"

"No," Elijah says as briefly and flatly as he can, and tries to ignore the fact that it still feels like a blow to the chest. "He's straight." He pulls his hand out of Orli's grasp and turns away. "I'm going to try and get some sleep." Orli nods, and Elijah takes a step back from the street. "I'm... I think I'll skip surfing tomorrow," Elijah adds. "Tell Dom, would you?"

He turns and heads up the walk at a brisk pace, unwilling to give Orli the chance to try and talk him into anything else, because that had worked so freaking well for him so far.

His phone is ringing when he walks in the door. He picks it up without thinking -- if he had thought about it, it probably would have occurred to him that he'd turned his cell off within three minutes of exiting the club because he didn't really feel like talking to anyone, and that still applies -- a little surprised that the handset is even sitting on it's little charger, and answers with his standard greeting (which gets him razzed by pretty much everyone he knows, but it's just habit from living with his mom): "Wood residence, Elijah speaking."

"I count you," Billy says, slowly but clearly. He sounds almost angry.

 _Who's fucking with who, now?_ Elijah thinks bitterly, but he doesn't say it. He has not yet reached the point where he wants to hurt Billy just so that _he_ isn't the only one hurting. He guesses that's good. He can't think of anything else to say, though, at least not anything that he won't regret at some point. "What am I supposed to say to that, Billy?" is what he finally manages, which probably isn't the best thing, but he thinks it's probably not the worst, either.

Instead of answering that, though, Billy says, "Is Orlando there?"

For one incredulous (hopeful) moment, Elijah thinks he might have misheard him. He rewinds the conversation in his brain, replays it, making sure to pay attention this time, but the results are the same.

Is Orlando there?

His brain tumbles into gear like a cranky old stick shift that you have to get rolling and pop the clutch in order to start, going from nothing flat to dangerously high r.p.m.'s in less than a second, and he thinks ( _ **fuck** you!_ ) ( _none of your Goddamned business!_ ) ( _how fucking **dare** you?_ ) ( _how could you even ask me that?_ ) ( _you're fucking breaking my heart here_ ) ( _I can't take much more of this shit_ ) ( _just leave me alone_ ) ( _I love you_ ) ( _just leave me alone_ ) too much, too fast, his mouth couldn't keep up even if he tried, but he pulls the phone back anyway, just in case, and just looks at it.

He's not sure how long.

Eventually, he hangs it up and places it back on the base. He thinks for a moment, and then flips off the ringer with his injured finger.

It's bleeding again, he sees, but he can't feel it.

* * *

He doesn't expect to sleep well or easily, so when he wakes up he is surprised and weirdly guilty to find that it's midmorning, and he's slept around twelve hours.

He gets up and starts a pot of coffee, and then busies himself making a cup of instant to tide him over until the real coffee finishes brewing.

He uses the Kool-Aid man cup and hot tapwater, which does not make a good cup of coffee at all, but it'll do. It's not about good, anyway.

It's about caffeine.

The first time Billy had caught him guzzling instant coffee while the regular coffee brewed, he'd laughed until tears had streamed down his cheeks. Elijah had laughed too, because Billy laughing like that, with his head tipped back and his eyes squeezed shut, was just infectious, and he had known that Billy wasn't laughing _at_ him. Not really.

He wonders if the surf is any good today.

Billy is the best surfer out of all of them. He'd taken to it like a duck to water.

"I'm not going to do this," he says. He swallows what's left in the Kool-Aid man's plastic head, and sets the cup on the counter. _Shower,_ he thinks, _and then Playstation, or maybe shopping for some new music, but--_ "I'm not going to do _this_ ," he finishes out loud.

It's stupid, the but the assertion actually makes him feel a little better, even though he's totally aware that it probably won't last.

He goes to find some music to blare while he's in the shower -- not so much because he'll be able to hear it while he's in there, but because it will make it so the place isn't dead-quiet when he gets out -- and becomes distracted with organizing his CDs for nearly two hours, during which he barely thinks at all, about anything.

So far so good.

He guzzles another cup of coffee -- real coffee this time -- from the Kool-Aid man's head (he's going to have to break down and wash something else to drink out of soon, he guesses, but one glance at his favorite coffee cup, a white, oversized mug with the legend "Instant Human: Just add coffee" emblazoned on it in big, jittery looking letters, reveals a thriving colony of blue-green mold, and he decides that can wait for another day) while he rummages around in the clean laundry pile for jeans and a t-shirt ( _Talk nerdy to me, baby._ ).

There are no clean boxers in the pile of laundry (which is dwindling, he'll probably have to do something about that soon, too), but he's not likely to be going anywhere at all, much less anywhere that they check to see that you didn't forget you underwear, so he figures he can go commando.

His resolution to not think/brood lasts until about midway through his shower, when it occurs to him pretty much out of the blue that he precisely remembers the feel of Billy pushing his cheek up against Elijah's cock, remembers the choked sounds he had made, and the feel of it, God, and he has his hand around his cock with no memory of putting it there, and he just wants to have it without the ending, just rewrite it, just Billy's mouth and Billy's hand on his hips and even the wicked sting of Billy's teeth that Billy doesn't know how to shield. He doesn't want to edit anything but the end, just cut that part out like editing movies, and put in Billy smiling and licking at his lips, Billy kissing him back, Billy pressing his naked chest, dusted with springy hair, against Elijah's and pressing his cock, still trapped in his jeans, against Elijah's hip, and Billy laughing at Elijah (gasping for breath and pretty fucking dazed), with bright eyes with the crinkles at the corners, and maybe saying, "A little help here, 'Lijah," and then gasping and laughing at the same time (both sounds muffled against Elijah's lips, because he doesn't stop kissing Billy, not if he doesn't have to) when Elijah slides his hand into Billy's loose jeans and curls his fingers around Billy's cock, and it would be so good, it could be so good, and he comes without a sound when Billy's cock pulses in his hand and Billy whispers Elijah's name against his neck.

And then he washes his hair and gets out of the shower.

It's nearly three-thirty when he glances up from the video game he's playing (Final Fantasy VII, which he's already beat, but which he's enjoying for the second time around, possibly because he has a new appreciation for the hotness that is Sephiroth) and realizes that he hasn't eaten today (although he's managed two pots of coffee and half a pack of cigarettes), and he's getting a slight headache as a result.

He's also managed to spend several hours without brooding (okay, so he'd had one minor setback, but it could be worse), and hooray for technology and its ability to facilitate escapism.

His knees pop when he stands up, and his back is stiff from hunching over his controller, but overall he feels okay.

He's all right. He can do this.

There isn't much in the way of food in his kitchen. Elijah isn't surprised; he rarely eats anything at his own house. Why should he? Dom can cook (and Elijah can't, at least not beyond rudimentary bachelor meals), and there are tons of really good restaurants not that far away, so it had never been necessary to keep his fridge stocked beyond milk (for Dom's coffee and for Billy's tea) and beer. There are also several condiments, though Elijah can't for the life of him remember where they had come from. Maybe they'd been here when he moved in?

The fridge does, however, offer a bountiful selection of take out menus taped to the outside, so Elijah peruses them for several minutes (while his third pot of coffee brews), and decides on Chinese (although he's aware of the not-so-subconscious meaning behind that choice). Since he's already being symbolic, he decides to go all out and orders Yu Hsiang Shrimp, but they don't serve Sweet and Sour Pork (he knows this from the menu, but he asks anyhow, because what kind of Chinese restaurant _doesn't_ serve Sweet and Sour Pork, which is the only Cantonese dish Elijah is relatively sure of), even though the menu claims to offer pan-Chinese dining. He asks the person on the phone what Cantonese dishes they serve (okay, he admits it, he doesn't recognize the origins of most of the dishes on the menu right off the top of his head, so he's an ignorant heathen, so what), and spends ten minutes on the phone with her while she explains to him what each of them is. He gets the giggles about midway through, because a truly appalling number of Cantonese dishes appear to involve bugs or entrails, and all he can think about is haggis. There are a few dishes he recognizes, though, and feels comfortable enough to put in his mouth, and he ends up ordering lemon chicken (which he hadn't realized was Cantonese).

It isn't until after he hangs up that he feels sort of stupid.

But not so stupid that he cancels the order.

Speaking of which, he's going to have to pay for it when it arrives, so he'd probably better find his wallet. And maybe wash a fork.

He's in his bedroom scrounging for last night's jeans when the knock comes at his door, and the Chinese place isn't that far, sure, but it's only been ten minutes!

"In a minute," he yells, and pats down the tangle of denim until he locates the square bulge of his wallet and fishes it out of the back pocket.

He checks for cash as he's making his way back to the living room (and is relieved to find he's got plenty, which is probably due to the fact that he'd left so early last night, and he probably should have checked that before he'd ordered), and the delivery guy pounds again. "I'm coming," Elijah shouts, and takes out enough money to pay for the food and a decent tip, and shoves his wallet into his back pocket. "Keep your fucking shirt on," he mutters (more quietly, because you just don't piss off the people that prepare your food), and kicks his controller out of the middle of the floor on his way to the door.

It's isn't the delivery guy though, and Elijah is both shocked and not even remotely surprised at the same time.

Billy is still in his wetsuit. His hair is damp, but not actually wet, and Elijah can see grains of sand stuck to his arms (bare) and legs (also bare, and shapely, even his knees, although knees are the one part of the human body that Elijah doesn't think are sexy, they're just nobbly and funny looking, except for Billy's apparently) and in a few places on his wetsuit.

Billy has a CD in his right hand.

His left pinky finger is wrapped in very white gauze with the curved tip of a metal splint poking out of the end; it resembles the pigs-in-a-blanket Elijah's mom used to make with biscuits from a can and tiny sausages. Except with gauze and a splint.

Um.

There is a faint sunburn on the tops of Billy's cheeks and nose. Also, there is a crescent shaped bruise running across the bridge of his nose and under his left eye.

He is, Elijah is distressed to note, almost unbearably sexy.

"I..." Billy says. He looks down at his feet (bare and sexy) for a second, and then lifts up the CD and waggles it a little. He looks back at Elijah. "I brought you your CD."

Elijah looks past Billy, and sees that Orli's Jeep is parked on the street, with Dom and Orli inside. He can see them both looking out the window. Their surfboards are strapped to the roof.

"I got it for you," he says, because he isn't really sure how to deal with what feels like a really big dose of weirdness going on. "It was supposed to be a 'sorry about last night' present." Billy just continues looking at him, sort of half holding the CD out. "I'm still sorry about last night, so you might as well keep it," Elijah says softly.

Billy nods, and lets the hand holding the CD fall to his side. He glances over his shoulder, presumably at Orli and Dom, like he's just checking that they're still there. "Right," Billy says. "Okay." He glances over his shoulder again.

Elijah feels a twinge of something that might be impatience flicker to life in his chest. He wants to know why Billy is here, he wants to know what happened to Billy's finger and eye, he wants to know why Billy hasn't changed out of his wetsuit and why Dom and Orli are waiting in the Jeep, like either the getaway car drivers or the world's most unlikely moral support, but he is just not going to ask. He just isn't.

"I ordered Chinese," he says instead, the words popping out of his mouth before he can bite down on them, and apparently he isn't going to ask about Billy's finger, eye, or wetsuit, but he's going to ask something, which turns out to be: "Are you hungry?"

 

"Yeah," Billy says. And then, when Elijah doesn't move (he's having trouble convincing himself that Billy just actually said yes), he adds, "Can I come in, Elijah?"

 _You can always come in,_ Elijah thinks, and knows it to be true, because you just don't turn away the ones you love, no matter what. No matter how much they've hurt you and how scared you are that they'll just keep hurting you. All you can do is let them in and hope.

He steps out of the doorway and lets Billy inside.

* * *

Is it even possible, Elijah wonders as he watches Billy's back (as Billy walks through the living room to the entertainment center and puts the CD down on top of the player), to kill hope completely? He sort of doubts it. He can feel it in the pit of his stomach, like... well like seeds. Seeds of hope. He is reduced to cliché. How annoying.

At the end of the world, only cockroaches and hope will be left.

Okay, he has to stop. Really.

"What did you order?" Billy asks. He turns slightly to look at Elijah when he speaks, and sunlight from the open door makes him squint. The corners of his eyes crinkle. Elijah stares and forgets to answer the question out loud. Billy notices -- although how could he not, Elijah guesses he must look spectacularly stupid -- and turns away. "Don't... Elijah, don't do that." He doesn't sound angry, though. He sounds uncertain, unhappy, uneasy. "I don't know if I can do this."

Elijah isn't terribly surprised to hear that. Even without being entirely certain what "this" Billy is referring to precisely, he isn't surprised. There are a lot of possibilities for "this" after all, and he's pretty sure all of them probably apply.

He forces himself to turn around and shut the door, and then to put one foot in front of the other until he passes Billy -- catching the slightest hint of his scent, saltwater and neoprene and the smell of skin that's soaked up too much sun -- and goes into the kitchen. He turns on the tap and holds a finger under it until it runs warm. He doesn't even notice that it's his injured finger until it starts to sting like hell, and then he pulls it out from under the water quickly. "Yu Tsiang Shrimp and Lemon Chicken," he says, because he feels Billy standing in the open arch between living room and kitchen. He can feel Billy looking at him. It feels like every audition Elijah has ever been to. It feels like being tested. It feels like standing on the high dive over the deep end of the pool for the first time, way up in the middle of nothing where everyone can see you and your skinny, too-pale limbs, and you think they must be able to hear your heartbeat thundering at ninety miles and hour and see the minute tremble in every muscle in your body, adrenaline and fear and tension, and knowing that there's really no way back, you can't go back without losing your dignity and your self-respect, and there's nothing to do but go through with it, jump, fling yourself off of the edge and hope like hell that the water is softer than it looks, and that you don't forget how to swim on the way down.

He picks up his mug ( _Instant Human: just add coffee_ ) and runs water in it until the moldy layer on the bottom comes loose. He dumps it into the sink, and pushes it down into the garbage disposal with a sticky, coffee-spotted spoon. He squeezes dish soap into the mug and spends two minutes and an inordinate amount of concentration scrubbing it until he's sure it's clean. Then he rinses it and dries it with a couple of napkins left over from last time he ordered out.

"Do you want some coffee?" he asks. "It's Kona."

Billy isn't crazy about coffee; he prefers tea, just like Dom and Orli, but Billy will make exceptions for really _good_ coffee. Billy likes Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain best, and since Kona is easier to come by, Elijah keeps it in stock. Actually, it's pretty much all Elijah drinks anymore, because it's easiest to just drink what Billy likes, since Elijah isn't anywhere near as particular (although he prefers a darker roast, actually, like Sumatra Black Satin) about his coffee.

He had been drinking Billy's preferred coffee for months now, actually. Fucking months. Because every once in a while, Billy wants it.

He really _is_ abysmally stupid.

 _I keep Tetley teabags for Dom, too,_ he reminds himself. _And I keep that disgusting green tea that Orli likes._

But, of course, he hasn't actually changed any of his habits in order to facilitate their preferences, either. He doesn't drink Tetley tea steeped until it's almost black (and also, Dom drinks coffee almost as much as tea these day, and the tea he keeps on hand is just as much for Billy as for Dom), and he doesn't even _look_ at Orli's vile green tea if he can help it (and he certainly doesn't smell it, that shit smells like ass, worse than bourbon, even).

 _How long has this been going on?_ he wonders a little dazedly, and is unnerved all over again at the fact that he doesn't' really know. He can't answer that question with any certainty, and he's just as ridiculous as the Craft Services girl that Billy had wheedled porridge out of. Maybe Elijah was a little subtler with his Yes, or maybe he was just a little denser about what he was trying to say.

"Yeah, all right," Billy says. "Thanks."

Elijah pours the coffee and takes deep breaths of the fragrant steam. It makes him feel steadier, which he supposes wryly means that he really is a pathetic addict. He adds sugar and milk in the proper measurements (Billy likes candy coffee, almost white and so sweet it hardly counts as coffee at all in Elijah's opinion).

He fills up the Kool-Aid man's head again for himself, and when he turns to offer Billy his coffee, he sees that Billy has come all the way into the kitchen and is standing a couple of feet away with his ass resting against the back of one of the kitchen chairs, watching Elijah. Elijah manages not to dump Billy's coffee all over himself, which at this point feels like a major accomplishment. His hand is more or less steady when he holds out Billy's cup, and Billy's hand is more or less steady when he takes it.

There are several moments of silence that are beyond awkward. They both sip at their coffee.

Elijah has never had less idea of what the right thing to say is.

"When I called last night," Billy says eventually, staring into the depths of his coffee cup as though the secrets of the world might be contained therein, "I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

 _Which part?_ Elijah wonders, and decides it might be a good idea to put down his coffee. He sets the Kool Aid man on the counter and takes a deep breath. "Okay," he says, because he isn't sure what he's supposed to say. Billy glances up at him for an instant, then back down at his cup. Elijah waits, but Billy bites at his bottom lip and doesn't say anything else. Elijah watches his Billy's small teeth worry at Billy's pink lip for a few seconds, and wonders if maybe it's his turn or something, and if so, what is he supposed to say? This still feels weirdly like a test or audition, something he isn't sure he knows the rules for.

He decides to go with something fairly non-threatening for his turn. "What happened to your finger?"

"Oh," Billy says, and looks down at his gauze-wrapped finger as if just remembering it. "I broke it. This morning."

Elijah feels his eyebrows climbing upward and asks, "Surfing?" before he remembers that maybe it's Billy's turn again.

Luckily, Billy doesn't seem to mind. "Yeah. I wasn't paying attention to what I was bloody doing, I suppose." He raises his left hand, the one with the bandaged pinky, and gingerly presses the pads of his first two fingers against the bruise under his eye. "When I hit the water, my hand hit the board, and then the board flipped up and smacked me in the face." He actually smiles faintly -- Elijah feels his face respond, folding into a smile that feels both surprised and sympathetic without his actual permission -- and adds, "I was thinking about you."

The smile slides off of Elijah face, replaced by what he suspects is sort of a fish-out-of-water expression, complete with open, gaping mouth and bulging eyes. He wonders vaguely if that counts as Billy's turn, and if it's his turn again, and if it would be acceptable for his turn if he asks Billy if he is feeling feverish. Or if maybe he's stoned on pain medication, although Billy's eyes look bright and alert, and are currently fixed on Elijah thoughtfully, which makes Elijah wish especially hard that he could somehow get his mouth to close, but the hinges on his jaw feel uncooperatively loose just at the moment.

"I've been doing it rather a lot, lately," Billy says -- Elijah thinks it's weird how conversational Billy's tone is, because it feels like it should be profound or something to Elijah, like it should reverberate off the walls like the voice of God -- and takes a sip of coffee. "At first I really tried not to," he says, still in that same tone.

Elijah manages to get his mouth closed, finally, but he still can't think of anything to say, so he just stands there and looks at Billy, leaning casually against the back of a chair and sipping at his coffee. Billy doesn't look relaxed, precisely, but he doesn't look like Elijah feels, either, which is like he's about to crawl out of his own skin, and he stares at Billy's slightly sunburned forehead and tries to read his mind with all his concentration. If he's going to develop telepathic powers, he can't think of a better time for it to happen.

"When I asked if Orli was here, I wanted to come over," Billy says. "Last night," he adds then, like Elijah might be confused about when this particular event had happened. "I wanted to talk. I didn't mean it to come out the way it did."

Elijah nods -- it's all he can manage -- and picks up the Kool Aid man and guzzles his contents, ignoring the burn of the coffee against the roof of his mouth and the back of his throat.

When he puts the Kool Aid man down, Billy is standing right in front of him.

"Elijah," Billy says, and touches his face.

Elijah feels his mouth fall open again.

Billy leans in and licks Elijah's bottom lip.

Elijah makes a sound like a startled mouse, a truly humiliating sort of "meep" sound, which he suspects he would feel a lot more humiliated by if it weren't for the fact that Billy's hand on his cheek has moved around to cradle the back of Elijah's head, and Billy seems to find Elijah's open mouth convenient rather than amusing. At least, he isn't laughing when he slides his tongue into it and curls it around Elijah's tongue.

 _Oh,_ Elijah thinks giddily, and he's never been so absolutely shocked in his entire life, but while his brain is still reeling, at least his body knows what the fuck it's doing, and his hands curl around Billy's biceps (thumbs sliding across slicksmooth neoprene, fingertips digging into warm, smooth skin sprinkled with grains of sand that Elijah's fingertips press against like the worlds most erotic Braille) and jerk Billy closer. "Billy," he hears himself groan into Billy's mouth, and Billy's fingers flex against the back of Elijah's head and then snarl into Elijah's hair, and Billy's left hand finds Elijah's hip and cups it lightly.

Elijah backs up against the counter and Billy notches his hips up against Elijah's, and Elijah feels Billy's warm, neoprene-clad thighs slide between his like Billy knows exactly what he's doing, and he gasps when Billy's hips arch and press against his, and wow, this is good, this is just… this is perfect and Billy is a really fucking good kisser, and he groans a little in disappointment when Billy pulls back slightly.

"I'm sorry," Billy whispers, and his lips slide along Elijah's jaw, hot and soft, and Elijah makes a sound that he hopes Billy can interpret as absolute forgiveness for whatever he's apologizing for. He doesn't want to think about what it might be, he just wants to live in this moment, pressed up against the kitchen counter by the warm bulk of Billy's chest and hips and the feel of his jeans and t-shirt growing slightly damp from Billy's wetsuit and the feel of Billy's mouth on his neck, talking, and Billy's left hand fumbling awkwardly between their bodies at the zip of Elijah's jeans, and Elijah can hear his heart pounding, loud and insistent, in his ears. "I'm sorry, I just didn't know what to do, 'Lijah, but I'll still like you tomorrow, I swear, and it doesn't have to be so complicated, nobody has to give anything up, and I just want you, and it doesn't have to be that big a deal, and I'm tired of thinking about what it means, just let me, just let me taste you…"

 _Okay, yeah, me too,_ Elijah thinks, and _yes, fuck yes, taste is good, yes,_ and when Billy makes a short, growling sound of frustration and presses the heel of his palm against the bulge in Elijah's jeans, he bucks into it helplessly, moaning, and he almost doesn't hear Billy murmur, "It doesn't mean anything," against his neck over the sound of himself moaning and Billy's breathing, harsh and fast in his ear.

But he does hear it.

And a second later, while he is frozen with dismay and some kind of piercing, blinding ache so deep that it feels like he might drown in it, he hears someone pounding on the front door, pounding ceaselessly like they've been doing it for a while and are starting to get pretty fucking impatient about it.

"Elijah?" Billy says, still curled warmly around Elijah's suddenly stiff body, and it would be so easy to just close his eyes, just ignore the knocking at the door and ignore the way his extremities suddenly feel cold, like all the heat in his body has been drawn toward the center of his body, into his chest, where it's boiling and condensing, getting smaller and smaller, like a black hole or something, which Elijah had read once were actually pinprick holes in the fabric of space created by a massive implosion of energy, like the death of a star, and he wonders what it would be like to live with that inside his chest all the time, a tiny hole with an inescapable gravitational field, something that sucks everything else into it and leaves the space around it bleak and empty and dark, leeching all the warmth out of him, all the hope -- so maybe that won't be left at the end of the world after all -- and leaving nothing.

Nothing.

Elijah wonders if there is such a thing as an emotional endpoint, as in a specific point past which you cannot go; a point past which there is just nothing, nothing to think or feel or say, and if so, is it possible to get back, once you're pushed past that barrier?

Is it like a black hole? Is it inescapable?

"Elijah?" Billy says again, and pulls back this time. Elijah is distantly aware that Billy is frowning and puzzled.

"The food is here," Elijah says, and carefully extracts himself from Billy's arms.

* * *

"Hey, Mr. Wen," Elijah says, and tries to smile. "Where's Jian?"

Jian is Mr. Wen's son, and generally does the delivery thing; Mr. Wen can usually be found in the kitchen in his white paper hat. He's never delivered Elijah's food before, and Elijah can't help but feel a little grateful for his presence, and the distraction it offers. His hands are shaking, so he shoves them into his back pockets.

"Mei Lin and Jian are…" he hesitates for long moments, and Elijah knows he's searching for the right words in English (Mr. Wen's English is really good, but he sometimes stumbles over words that are very western), before he finishes with, "Honeymooning?" in a questioning tone.

Elijah searches his memory for Mei Lin, and finally comes up with a small, pretty Asian girl with unusual green eyes and a short, sleek bob who sometimes works the register at the restaurant. "Wow, congratulations!" he says, and smiles and means it this time. "Mei Lin is the girl with green eyes?"

"Yes!" Mr. Wen beams, clearly pleased that Elijah remembers her. "They marry last week. Li Ming and I will run restaurant until they return, and Li Ming's third sister helps." He smiles widely at Elijah and hefts the pair of plastic bags in his hand. "So I deliver!"

"Great!" Elijah says, and steps aside. "Come in, I'm sorry." He takes the bags from Mr. Wen and sets them on the coffee table. "These are heavy; you didn't walk did you?" The restaurant is close, but not _that_ close.

"I have Jian's bicycle," Mr. Wen tells Elijah, and waggles his eyebrows. "Jian thinks I will crash it while he is away."

He grins at Elijah and Elijah grins back, thinking (as he has thought several times before) that Mr. Wen's combination Chinese/New Zealand accent is possibly the coolest, funniest, and most impossible thing to reproduce ever. He pats himself down for money -- he remembers having it in his hand when he'd answered the door and found Billy on the other side, but he can't remember what the hell he had done with it afterwards, which shouldn't particularly surprise him, he supposes -- and finally finds it wadded up in his front right pocket.

"Li Ming put in Mountain Dew," Mr. Wen tells him. "I take it back if you don't want, but she say you usually order soda pop, and she think you forget. No charge. You good customer, she say."

"Oh," Elijah says, going still for a moment. He _had_ forgotten, actually, and he's momentarily taken aback by the fact that Li Ming (who is short and round and wears silver-framed glasses that are far too big for her face, who smiles all the time, and who's name, she had once told Elijah -- while he had been waiting to pick up an order and take food over to Dom's -- means bright and beautiful) had remembered such a thing. "Oh," he says again. "I did forget. Wow. That's… that's so nice."

Mr. Wen beams at him, and Elijah, inexplicably, finds himself near tears.

 _Rough fucking week,_ he thinks unsteadily, and rubs one hand over his face.

"Li Ming in very good mood since wedding," Mr. Wen confides, and pats Elijah on the shoulder.

Elijah laughs a little shakily, and nods, and fumbles for his wallet, because the tip today (and every time he orders from them hereafter) has just gone up exponentially.

He passes the money to Mr. Wen, who glances at it doubtfully for a moment, and says, "This too much," and tries to pass some of it back. Elijah tucks both hands behind his back and shakes his head. "Is not good sense to pay so much for free soda pop," Mr. Wen points out, which surprises a bark of laughter out of Elijah.

"I'm not paying for the soda pop, Mr. Wen," he says, which is absolutely true. He isn't sure exactly what he's paying for, whether it's the kindness of Mrs. Wen (also known as Li Ming, the bright and beautiful) or the happiness of Jian and Mei Lin, or just because he doesn't have anything else to give right at the moment -- he'll go out later, though, and buy a wedding present for Jian and Mei Lin, something good, something new couples can't afford to buy for themselves but really would like, he'll call his mom, she'll know what to get -- or maybe it's that Mr. Wen had happened to show up at just the right moment to give Elijah something to smile about, to feel genuinely happy about, just when he had needed it most. "Just take the money."

Mr. Wen looks at him for a moment, then shrugs. "Is your money," he says philosophically, and smiles toothily.

Elijah just stands there for a moment after he leaves, trying to get a hold on himself. Then he picks up the bags and carries them to the kitchen table.

Billy is standing in the archway between living room and kitchen, smiling a little and looking at Elijah as though he's done something unexpected, with eyes that are a little too wide and very bright and very green. Elijah avoids looking at him for too long. He takes the Mountain Dew bottle out -- it's a giant two liter bottle, plenty for both of them -- first and then the cartons of rice and the fragrant main dishes. "Do you want the chicken?" Elijah asks, "or the shrimp?"

"Okay," Billy says. "What did I say wrong?"

"It doesn't mean anything," Elijah answers honestly, the words short and bitter, and he hadn't actually meant to answer, but once they're out, he isn't sorry. He turns to look at Billy, and he's not surprised at the blank look on his face, the total lack of understanding. He's so fucking sick of that look. It makes him grind his teeth and clench his hands into fists. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway, Billy?" he growls. " _'I want you, it doesn't mean anything.'_ "

"It…" Billy says, "I…." His brows scrunch into a frown for a moment, then relax and rise upward, and then scrunch up again. "I just meant that you don't have to… that we can…" He trails off, and gestures with his uninjured hand, a brief and uncertain motion that doesn't communicate anything to Elijah at all, though clearly Billy thinks that it should.

"We can _what_ , exactly," Elijah demands. "We can fuck?"

Billy blushes furiously, face burning -- and in spite of the situation, in spite of the fact that they're yelling at each other again, Elijah can't help but think Billy looks genuinely cute when he blushes, young and endearingly shy, and he has to steel himself against the way his chest wants to go soft and warm at the sight of it -- but he manages to nod slightly. "I thought you wanted that," he says. "You don't have to… give up anything, Elijah. It doesn't have to be one or the other… others." But Billy looks tired when he says it, and he rubs briefly at his eyes with his injured hand, his big, gauze-wrapped pinky sticking out ridiculously, like British people drinking tea on TV. "I just want… I don't want it to be so bloody complicated. I just want…"

"Yeah, I get it," Elijah says acidly. "You just want an uncomplicated fuck, you don't like guys but you'll make a fucking exception for me, as long as it's uncomplicated, as long as it doesn't have to fucking mean anything, like maybe you're gay, or bi at the very fucking least, I fucking get it, okay. Just… just…." He makes a shoving gesture with both hands, and he can see the resolution to this whole fucked up mess clearly now, as much as he doesn't want to, and he wants it to just go away, wishes more than anything that he could take back everything he's ever said and everything he's done since the drunken disaster at Billy's flat.

He just wants it to be done now. He doesn't fucking think he can take it if it goes on much longer.

"I want you to leave," Elijah says, low and as calm as he can, which isn't very fucking calm at all; he can hear his voice shaking.

He doesn't look up from where he's trained his eyes on the surface of the kitchen table, but he still sees Billy wince from the corner of his eye, sees Billy draw up and back and into himself, an abrupt retreat accompanied by a sharp headshake. "No," Billy says, but softly and on an exhalation, like the word has been surprised out of him, and then a little more forcefully. "No!" He takes a quick step toward Elijah, and Elijah looks up, caught by surprise, because Billy has been awfully quick to fucking back off previous to this, and now Elijah doesn't know what to think. He takes a step back, and Billy hesitates, and Elijah sees that his face is tight, his lips are that tight, thin line that Elijah has seen too many times in the past week, and really really fucking hates, and his eyebrows are drawn together so tightly that there are two deep vertical lines wedged between them. "It took everything I had to fucking come here," Billy whispers hoarsely, "to fucking… just to fucking talk to you, Elijah! Everything! I don't… I'm not bloody leaving until I understand why you want me to go!"

And it's so raw and blunt and painful, it's so fucking plaintive, that Elijah doesn't know how to answer, isn't sure he even _can_ answer, because his throat is closed completely and his eyes are wet and it feels like someone has just landed a 747 on his fucking chest, and it's too heavy, it's just too fucking much, but when he opens his mouth, words come out all on their own, fast and bitter and so acidic that the back of Elijah's throat burns with them. "It's not fucking good enough," he screams, and Billy recoils like Elijah had slapped him, and his eyes go so wide Elijah can see whites all the way around the irises. "It's not enough, Billy, I don't fucking hate myself enough to fucking put myself through that, and contrary to popular fucking opinion, I am not a fucking slut! I'm not going to go to bed with you and just hope that you might fucking change your mind some day, and I'm not fucking interested in being with someone who wants to pretend he's straight except when he's fucking me, and I won't fucking let you use me as some kind of outlet or experiment no matter how much I fucking love you! I'm not interested in settling for what I can get from you, you fucking hopeless repressed _asshole_! Fuck you! Get the fuck out of my house!"

And he fully fucking expects Billy to go, he really does, and he's glad, sure he is, just get the fuck out so he can go back to bed and put his head under his pillow and pretend he isn't crying because it " _doesn't mean anything_."

Billy just stands there, though, and Elijah closes his eyes and turns away.

"Elijah," Billy says, and Elijah flinches, but he has his back to Billy, so maybe that's okay.

"Please go," Elijah says dully. "Please."

"I thought you wanted it that way, Elijah," Billy says quietly.

"Just go," Elijah says, and it calls up a memory that makes him laugh bitterly. " _'Get the fuck out of here, you little bastard,'_ " he quotes harshly, and seriously considers going and locking himself in the bathroom.

"Listen to me, bugger it!" Billy half-shouts, and Billy's fingers dig abruptly into Elijah's upper arms, startling him, and whirl him around so that he's facing Billy. "I thought you wanted it like that, Elijah! I thought… you seem really fucking comfortable with Dom and Orlando, and I thought you would… that maybe you…" Billy takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a second (during which Elijah sees that Billy's mouth is not a thin, tight line any more, but is instead slightly open, and he's breathing hard, and his lower lip is wet, and man oh man, is this a bad time to be noticing Billy's inherent and totally unconscious hotness). " _I_ was going to settle," Billy says finally, his eyes still closed, "for what I could get."

Billy opens his eyes and looks at Elijah for long moments, and then lets go of Elijah's arms. He shakes his left hand absently, and Elijah wonders if he'd managed to hurt his pinky grabbing Elijah like that. And then he wonders what the hell Billy just said. And then he wonders if Billy is feverish or on pain medication again. And then he wonders what the hell Billy just said.

"You're a lot different with them," Billy says. "With Dom, I mean. Happier."

Elijah blinks at him.

Billy smiles a little, and sighs. "You don't yell as much," he says wryly, but the smile slides off his lips and out of his eyes. " _I_ was going to settle for what I could get, 'Lijah. And hope that you changed your mind some day."

"I…" Elijah says dumbly. "You…?"

"For… a while now. I tried not to… and then, when the thing happened, I just… I panicked, and it just got worse, and…" He rakes his fingers through his hair. "I didn't know what to do," he says softly. "I didn't mean for it to happen like that. Or at all, actually. I know I was…. God, I'm sorry I was such a fucking prick, but I didn't know how to handle it and I thought… I didn't think you'd ever want…" He shakes his head. "It seemed like it would be easier to have nothing at all than to only have that and to see you with Dom and Orli, too, but then it got… really ugly and it _wasn't_ easier at all, and last night I thought, just fuck it, you know? Because I was miserable and you were miserable, and maybe it would be better if I could just… just take what I could get." His voice falls to a whisper. "And then at least you could be happier with me like you are with Dom."

Elijah says nothing for a long time. He doesn't know what to say, and he still feels numb and empty, like maybe it hasn't hit him yet. Or maybe he can't anymore. Maybe he's stuck now, on the other side of the barrier, and he can't get back. Maybe it's too late. Eventually, he says, "It wasn't because you aren't gay?" he asks, because that's the thought currently tickling inside his mostly-empty head.

"No. Well. I'm not, but… or maybe I am. Fuck, I don't know. I'm bi, I guess. Now. Um." He scratches the end of his nose uncomfortably, and Elijah feels the echo of something that almost might be amusement. "It wasn't because of that, though. Or, at least, not mostly. It was mostly just… well, it was that I thought you… wouldn't want me, not for real. I didn't want to be… I didn't want you to break my heart."

It's awkward and halting and not even remotely sexy, but Elijah is abruptly more turned on than he's ever been in his entire life, dick hard and grating uncomfortably against the rough denim of his blue jeans, and the icy void in his chest (the one he'd wondered if it was possible to move past) is just… gone, and maybe it isn't possible to kill hope completely.

But… there's something lurking, still, something uncertain and pointy, because… What Billy is saying seems pretty clear, pretty hard to mistake, but Billy hasn't actually _said_ it, has he? Elijah has, yeah, even if he'd been yelling when he'd done it, but Billy hasn't, and maybe it isn't that big a deal, and probably he should let it go, but he thinks maybe that sleety pinprick of discomfort will stay put as long as Billy doesn't say it, as long as Elijah is aware that he hasn't said it and can't help but be paranoid about why, and maybe it'll start to get bigger again the longer it goes on, and he doesn't want that. He isn't sure he wants to risk it.

He's startled when Billy reaches out slowly, like you reach out toward a dog you don't know, gradually and carefully, to give the dog a chance to sniff you and get used to you and decide to let you pet it, ready to pull back quickly if the dog pulls away or growls or snaps. Elijah doesn't growl or snap, and while he tenses slightly, he doesn't pull away. Billy sweeps the pad of his thumb across the thin skin beneath Elijah's left eye, and then his right. It takes Elijah a moment to understand that Billy is wiping away tears.

He almost laughs. It seems… well, really stupid and tender and cliché like romance novel stuff, but he can't deny that it makes him want to smile, or grab Billy and kiss him (and throw him on the table and suck his cock amongst the cardboard takeout containers), or declare his undying love in obnoxious, flowery language. Okay, not so much that last one.

Or maybe so, because when he opens his mouth, what comes out is: "I'm in love with you."

Billy smiles, wide and real, grooving deep lines around his mouth and creating faint webs at the corners of his bright eyes, and then he's kissing Elijah hard, his hands cupping Elijah's face (Elijah can feel the gauze wrapped around Billy's pinky brushing against his ear), and Elijah is disappointed for approximately two-point-five seconds (because he had hoped Billy would say it and obliterate that little shard of unease buried in Elijah's chest), before he becomes totally distracted by the slick, warm press of Billy's (pretty fucking) mouth against his, and then the pressure of Billy's body again, still-damp wetsuit smelling of sea water and sunshine, maneuvering Elijah backward until his ass hits the kitchen counter (Billy grunts and grinds his hips against Elijah's once he's managed to immobilize him there), and it occurs to Elijah to be amused at the fact that the not-gay-but-I-suppose-this-means-I'm-bi-boy seems not to be having any trouble at all manhandling Elijah into an appropriate position.

"Do you know how to…" Elijah gasps against Billy's mouth, and then groans because Billy's right hand has snaked down to cup Elijah through his jeans again, and there is the seriously alarming possibility that the question might be moot, as Elijah might come before Billy gets to the part he may not know how to do. "Oh, fuck," he gasps out shakily. "Oh, fuck yeah, Billy."

"Um," Billy murmurs into his mouth. "Not really." But he doesn't stop kissing Elijah, and after a few moments he manages to get his hand down the front of Elijah's jeans and Elijah jerks and shudders at the feel of Billy's warm hand sliding around his naked cock. "No pants," Billy murmurs appreciatively, and kisses Elijah again, deeper, a combination of sleek tongue and soft lips and the vivid scrape of Billy's stubble against his chin, and Elijah isn't sure how it happens but his jeans are down around his ankles, and Billy is sliding downward.

"W-wait," he manages to gasp (and holy fucking hand-grenades, who the hell knew that damp neoprene would fucking feel like that sliding along his cock), because he doesn't want it to be like that, one-sided and awkward and wrong, not again.

"Just let me," Billy murmurs throatily, almost a growl. "I want to, I love you, and I fucking _dream_ about this," and Elijah doesn't say anything because, wow, just wow, and he doesn't have time anyway because Billy is licking at the head of his cock, pink tongue giving quick, experimental little licks, and Elijah moans, high-pitched and rather piteous-sounding, he thinks, and Billy groans, deep and low, and just lunges forward and fucking takes it in.

He chokes, just like the first time, but he doesn't pull back, he just shifts and tries again, and apparently he's found a better angle because oh oh, shit oh fuck oh _Holy Fucking God_ it's good, and Elijah has to angle his elbows behind him to grab onto the edge of the counter with both hands and hold himself up, because his knees are suddenly untrustworthy in the extreme and his fucking thighs are twitching like crazy, and he's close, really really fucking close -- and Billy is going to fucking think he's the one minute wonder at this fucking rate -- and he has to make Billy stop, has to because last time he hadn't and Billy clearly hadn't been prepared, and he whispers, "Billy, you… you have to fucking… you… stop or I'm…" only it comes out a broken, stammering croak of sound, not really a whisper, and in response, Billy just… fucking… _hums_.

"Shit!" Elijah yelps, and comes, hips twisting and jerking helplessly (in Billy's hands, he doesn't remember those being there), and Billy doesn't fucking pull back then, either, and Elijah can't see or speak, can only shake and shiver and try to fucking keep breathing, until Billy finally pulls back slowly, slowly, and then sinks back onto his heels at Elijah's feet. Licking his lips.

 _Oh, whoa,_ Elijah thinks, and blinks dazedly down at Billy, legs trembling. Then he decides to give up on standing entirely and slides down the cabinet and onto the floor, which is very cold on his bare ass.

Billy looks at him, his eyes half-lidded and almost sleepy, and his lips curl into a soft, pink smirk. Smug.

"Um," Elijah says. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Billy says, and the smirk softens and becomes slightly less smug.

And Elijah is dead fucking certain that smug is the right word. And he wants to laugh, because it's just fucking funny, isn't it? _Not fucking gay, my **ass**_ he thinks, and grins.

"Am I allowed to kiss you after I've had your dick in my mouth?" Billy asks (apparently quite seriously), and Elijah snorts, just wildly fucking amused and charmed and just _happy_ , and twists around until he's on his knees so he can lean in and kiss Billy senseless.

That goes on for some time.

Eventually, he pulls back. "For a straight guy," Elijah says, "that was pretty fucking decent." Billy arches an eyebrow at him, and Elijah feels a little shaky with energy, like there's just too much going on inside of him to be still, like there isn't enough of him to contain his elation, his blessed-out, sexed-up, pure motherfucking _joy_. "Take me to bed," he demands, "and fuck me."

He very much enjoys the way Billy's eyes go wide with surprise for a second, and then sort of narrow and go hazy and glittery with what Elijah is pretty sure is lust, and oh yeah, oh wow, that's so fucking good.

He grins and adds, "If you think you can figure it out, anyway, straight-boy."

Billy's lips curl and curve into a smile that exactly echoes the hazy-glittery-desire in his eyes, and he murmurs: "I'll fucking manage."


End file.
